Executive summary

• Author: Favilli, Chiara
• Pages: 5-12

5

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. Introduction

Italy is a country made up of 20 regions, each with its own traditions and history. The

main differences, in terms of working conditions, job opportunities and the quality of

public services (education, healthcare and transport), are between the northern and

southern regions. The family is at the centre of the structure of society and of social

welfare, with extended families still living together, in particular in the south. Organised

crime, corruption, the black economy and tax evasion are structural scourges that still

hinder the full development of the country, with the complicity of a political class that has

never been able to tackle them adequately.

Some relevant data on the Italian population are provided by Istat, the Istituto nazionale

di statistica (Italian National Institute for Statistics). According to the most recent

surveys, in a population of 60 438973,1there are about 2 600 000 people with

disabilities, which represents 4.3 % of the total population.2 Pupils with disability number

156 000, or 3 % of the total number of students. One million people identify themselves

as homosexual or bisexual.3There are 5 144400foreign nationals, but no data are

available on the racial or ethnic origin of the population. With regard to religion, 76.5%

of the total population have been baptised into the Catholic Church, although only around

25 % declare themselves to be practising Catholics. Muslims represent around 2 % of the

population, the same percentage as Orthodox Christians. The Jewish community has a

historical presence in Italy and has about 35 000 members.

In 2018, the law on the prison system wasamended, prohibiting discrimination and

introducing a duty on the administration to place a homosexual detainee in an

appropriate place, taking into account his or her fear of being mistreated by fellow

prisoners and the right to access training activities.4 Proper implementationof the law

requires appropriate places but not separate ones: homosexual detainees enjoy the right

to access all training activities available to detainees in general and should not be placed

in separate or special places.

The majority of judgments in the field of discrimination law are still based on the ground

of nationality, although the application of anti-discrimination law on other grounds is

increasing. However, discrimination law is still not perceived as a specific sector of the

law, and is ignored even in databasesthat are commonly used by judges and lawyers.

Both on political platforms and in the social sciences, discrimination is still a low-priority

issue. The marginalisation of the activity of the Ufficio Nazionale Antidiscriminazioni

Razziali(UNAR) (National Office Against Racial Discrimination), an office of the

Government that is supposed to be the equality body, is both a cause and an effect of

this lack of awareness, at least among politicians.

Surveys about perceptions of discrimination are very rare, so it is difficult to provide

accurate estimates of the frequency and magnitude of discrimination in all fields –and

media reports are often very inaccurate.5Certainly, hostile attitudes can be observed

1Istat (2019), available at: http://dati.istat.it/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=DCIS_POPRES1.

2Istat (2010), La disabilità in Italia (Disability in Italy), available at:

https://www.fabi.it/public/documenti/salute-e-sicurezza/7286ISTAT_DISAB_2010.pdf.

3Istat (2012), La popolazione omosessuale nella società italiana –2011 (The homosexual population in

Italian society – 2011), available at: http://www.istat.it/it/files/2012/05/report-omofobia_6giugno.pdf.

4Italy, Legislative Decree 123/2018, on reforming the prison system (Riforma dell’ordinamento

penitenziario), 2 October 2018, available at: https://www.normattiva.it/uri-

res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:decreto.legislativo:2018-10-02;123!vig=.

5Survey on discrimination by gender, sexual orientation and ethnic origin (IST-02258 Indagine sulle

discriminazioni in base al genere, all'orientamento sessuale, alla appartenenza etnica), available at:

http://www.istat.it/it/archivio/30726.