17/04/2025

| Wednesday 14 May, at 11.00 a.m., within the framework of Codeway Expo 2025, at the Fiera di Roma, LINK 2007 is promoting an event entitled ‘Development Cooperation: reflections and solutions for a changing world’. The event will focus on how development cooperation should evolve in the face of the current epochal changes. The crisis of democratic systems, the disintegration of multilateralism and the increasing affirmation of relations of power between states raise new global challenges. In this context, it is essential to reconsider the role of international cooperation and how it must adapt to cope with new geopolitical, social and economic dynamics. A dialogue will open between institutional actors, experts and civil society to compare visions and define how cooperation can evolve in a rapidly changing world, promoting innovative solutions for a shared future, able to overcome divisions and reaffirm the principles of global solidarity.

| On Wednesday 14 May, at 3 p.m., a thematic seminar entitled ‘Migration and Development Cooperation: a sustainable approach for societies’ will be held. The seminar aims to analyse the relationship between professional training and migration policies, with a focus on opportunities for young people. We need to rethink migration. An approach that sees migration not as a phenomenon to be stopped, but as a phenomenon to be governed for it to take place under more sustainable and equitable conditions. In this context, training plays a central role, providing young people with the skills they need to effectively enter the labour market, both in their country of origin and destination, and to make informed migratory choices, promoting legal, safe and planned migration.

Starting from the project A Brighter Future, the seminar will have the objective of stimulating a pragmatic reflection among the different actors and stakeholders, for a sustainable migration with a positive impact on the new generations and the development of the communities, both in the countries of origin and in the host countries. Discussion and listening can be the best tools to build migration policies capable of leading to as far-sighted as possible government choices.

| On Thursday 15 May, at 10:00 a.m., the seminar (in English): ‘Debt of African Countries. RELEASE, a winning proposal for sustainable development’. The theme will be the external debt of African countries, which is one of the main challenges hindering development, aggravating the continent’s economic and social fragilities. The 2025 Jubilee represents a unique opportunity to address this issue and to promote the Sustainable Development Goals in the most vulnerable countries. The seminar will explore solutions to reduce and reshape debt, fostering long-term sustainable investments and creating opportunities for growth, jobs and infrastructure development. The Mattei Plan for Africa represents an important opportunity to strengthen economic relations between Italy and Africa, stimulating private investments and development projects, but only if countries are not suffocated by the burden of public debt. Reducing debt will free up resources for these investments, thus contributing to economic growth and improved living conditions.

RELEASE is an initiative with a strong impact both at the international political level, as a key step in the implementation of the “Financing for Development” commitments, and in the programming and operationalisation of international cooperation, for a debt restructuring that is fair, regular, timely and efficient and enables countries to invest in the OSS.