Introduction

On June 13, 2025, the new National Plan against racism, xenophobia and intolerance was adopted following an extensive process of consultation and institutional, social, and territorial dialogue, coordinated by the UNAR - National Office Against Racial Discrimination.

The new Plan aligns with the European Union's Anti-Racism Action Plan 2020-2025 and serves as a multi-year strategic tool for the prevention and systemic countering of ethnic and racial discrimination. It represents an organic and coordinated response to racism and intolerance at the national level, and acts as a lever for promoting integration.

The proposed approach aims to strengthen the constitutional principle of equal treatment and non-discrimination, while promoting positive interaction between people from different backgrounds, valuing diversity, and recognizing the contribution of migrants and people of migrant origin to Italian society.

The Plan intends to act on various areas of intervention, such as work and employment, education, health, security, and victim protection. These are complemented by awareness-raising and training campaigns. The Plan also aims to promote the construction of an inclusive society, reinforcing the sense of belonging and shared responsibility.

Context

Over the past twenty years, Italy has undergone a profound demographic transformation, surpassing the European average in terms of the incidence of foreign population. Today, there are over five million foreign citizens residing in Italy, rising to about seven million if naturalized citizens are included. This presence is particularly concentrated in the Center-North where, in some municipalities, residents of foreign origin exceed 25% of the total, significantly influencing birth rates and the number of mixed marriages. Despite this strong presence, many people of foreign origin continue to suffer ethnic-racial discrimination, highlighting the lack of substantial equality.

From an economic perspective, the foreign component is extremely dynamic and vitally contributes to the country's development, especially in entrepreneurship, and represents a significant component of employment. However, a marked occupational segregation persists: most foreign workers, including those with high educational qualifications, are employed in low-skilled jobs with precarious contracts. This phenomenon of over-qualification doubles the risk of poverty compared to natives and drastically limits access to property ownership, pushing the migrant population towards rental markets often characterized by prejudice and contractual irregularities.

The education sector shows conflicting signals. While foreign students represent the only growing scholastic component in a context of low birth rates, structural criticalities emerge such as high dropout rates, school delays, and channeling towards technical and professional institutes. Access to university also remains significantly lower compared to Italian peers, effectively limiting social mobility prospects for second generations.

Finally, in the health sector, despite the Italian regulatory framework guaranteeing equal treatment and essential care even to irregular migrants, invisible barriers hinder health integration. Poor specific literacy, language difficulties, and the complexity of the bureaucratic system prevent equitable access to prevention and screening services. These issues particularly affect foreign women, whose isolation from health services risks negatively impacting the well-being of the entire family unit.

The National Action Plan

The National Plan against racism and xenophobia outlines an integrated intervention strategy that aims to transform diversity management in Italy through a holistic approach. The proposed institutional framework intends to bring all public resources into a coherent system of anti-discrimination and equal opportunities, overcoming the logic of fragmented interventions. To fully benefit from immigration and ensure substantial equality, it is necessary to promote social and cultural cohesion on a national scale that avoids the formation of parallel societies or closed enclaves, valuing the contribution of migrants and cultivating a shared sense of belonging.

The plan aims to do this by activating various areas of intervention:

• Work and employment
• Housing
• Education, culture, and sports
• Health
• Security and protection of victims
• Communication and media

These are complemented by three fundamental transversal axes:

• Training of public operators
• Information and awareness campaigns
• Creation and consolidation of territorial networks

Work and Employment Axis
For the Work and Employment Axis, the National Plan outlines a series of objectives and strategic actions aimed at ensuring equal treatment and effective inclusion of foreign citizens in the labor market.

The Plan provides for specific training courses on equal opportunity principles for Employment Center officials and recruitment operators. At the company level, it promotes the adoption of tools such as Diversity Charters, ethical codes, and adherence to the Equal Opportunities Charter to value companies that integrate anti-discriminatory principles.

The Plan addresses the challenge of occupational segregation, which is the tendency to confine foreign workers in unskilled jobs. Proposed actions include research on discriminatory practices in selections and experiments with mentoring paths to counter subordination, with a particular focus on foreign women. Among the most innovative measures to counter professional downgrading and prejudices are:

• Promotion and dissemination of anonymous curricula in recruitment practices.
• Actions to facilitate the recognition of educational qualifications and professional certifications obtained abroad.
• Incentivizing forms of dual apprenticeship that allow for obtaining an educational qualification while working.
• Enhancing the participation of women with migratory backgrounds in STEM disciplines.

Furthermore, to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers, the Plan provides for awareness initiatives on labor market rules and programs to promote self-entrepreneurship through bureaucratic assistance desks.

Finally, great importance is given to creating work environments that respect religious freedom, promoting "reasonable accommodations" such as flexibility in hours for holidays or prayer and adaptation of work spaces and clothing.

Education, Culture, and Sports Axis
The actions for the Education, Culture, and Sports Axis define an integrated strategy to promote inclusion and counter prejudices through the educational system and sports practice.

In the school environment, the Plan aims to train teaching staff on the use of non-discriminatory language and to integrate themes such as equal opportunities and countering bullying and cyberbullying into educational programs.

To foster an inclusive culture, various initiatives are promoted:

• Awareness activities in the school world and promotion of literature by authors of foreign origin.
• Research and monitoring through sample surveys on the discriminatory phenomenon among young people.
• Enhancement of culture through, for example, the publication of calls to support the participation of artists of migrant origin in cultural productions and festivals.

The sports sector is also considered fundamental in promoting respect and integration through concrete measures, such as signing protocols and updating ethical codes of sports federations to eliminate discriminatory barriers in athlete registration, specific training on non-discrimination for managers, referees, and athletes, and the creation of a standard protocol for detecting cases of ethnic-racial discrimination in the sport sector.

Housing Axis
In the housing sector, action focuses on monitoring the real estate market and public housing to avoid ghettoization, promoting exchanges of good practices among municipalities to facilitate housing insertion and counter discrimination.

To impact the culture of the real estate sector, various initiatives aimed at professionals and institutions are planned:

• Implementation of information and awareness courses for real estate agencies, apartment-building administrators, and tenant associations.
• Promotion of intervention models to reduce conflicts within communities.
• Creation of exchange and networking networks between local authorities and public and private operators to disseminate good practices in housing insertion.
• Implementation of information campaigns to promote the right to housing and prevent discrimination.

The Plan also introduces concrete measures to support people at risk of housing marginalization or eviction through free legal support for victims of discrimination, experimentation with innovative housing models such as co-housing, and activation of territorial help desks to assist at-risk categories in finding housing and handling administrative procedures.

Health Axis
The strategy also intervenes in the health sector, aiming to increase health literacy of the foreign population and ensure equitable and non-discriminatory access to healthcare.

The Plan aims to improve communication between patients and the healthcare system through the creation of multilingual information campaigns on sensitive topics such as pregnancy, childbirth, and maternal-child health, and the development of inclusive communication channels that use interpreters and cultural mediators to overcome language barriers. Additionally, it aims to improve the digital accessibility of health portals and applications, making them available in multiple languages.

To eradicate ethnic-racial discrimination in health services, training courses for administrative and healthcare personnel focused on non-discrimination and equal opportunity principles are planned.

Security and Justice Axis
This area aims to make the judicial system and law enforcement more effective in countering hate and protecting victims.

The Plan provides for the definition of national standard procedures to classify and record cases of hate crime and hate speech, the strengthening of local judicial help desks, and the inclusion of intercultural mediators and expert interpreters to avoid discrimination during trials, as well as the promotion of territorial listening and assistance activities for victims of racism. The Plan also aims to incentivize territorial strategies that use restorative justice as a tool to resolve conflicts arising from discriminatory conduct.

Communication and Media Axis
The Communication and Media Axis defines strategies to promote non-discriminatory language and an inclusive representation of diversity within the information and broadcasting system. 

The Plan directly intervenes on the governance tools of the public service, providing for the sensibilization of information professionals and the promotion of inclusion. It also provides for the implementation of media language monitoring activities to analyze how migration issues and the representation of migrant citizens are treated. 

To transform newsrooms into more inclusive environments, concrete measures are planned, such as internships, traineeships, and scholarships specifically aimed at information operators who are citizens of third countries, and the organization of awareness meetings with publishers to promote a greater presence in the media of voices of people belonging to groups more exposed to discrimination and racism phenomena.

Transversal Axes
Regarding the transversal axes, they aim to promote information, training, and the consolidation of territorial networks against discrimination. The interventions intend to raise public awareness through national campaigns and digital tools, actively involving associations, second generations, and young influencers of foreign origin.

A central axis is represented by the enhancement of training for Public Administration personnel, considered the strategic lever for profound cultural change. The prohibition of discrimination is reinforced through specific programs, such as courses dedicated to the culture of respect and violence prevention. These training courses aim to sensitize public officials, from justice operators to law enforcement, so that they are able to recognize and counter every form of prejudice, prevent so-called institutional discrimination, and ensure fair and respectful treatment of everyone.

Finally, the Plan aims to make the principle of non-discrimination a permanent evaluation criterion in public policies. Among the most concrete measures are the definition of a legal status for the figure of the intercultural mediator and the enhancement of representation paths for foreign citizens at the local level, ensuring that migrant communities have a voice in decision-making processes through consultations and additional councilors.

Special Focus
The National Plan also includes Special Focus areas that outline a series of targeted interventions to counter specific forms of discrimination and promote interreligious and intercultural dialogue. These focuses place a strong emphasis on combating antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Afrophobia through improving the authorities' ability to prosecute hate crimes, enhancing victim support, defining specific guidelines for prevention in schools, and initiatives to raise awareness and enhance cultural and religious pluralism.

Regarding detention contexts, the Plan provides for initiatives to educate prison staff on the specific needs of people with different ethnic or migratory backgrounds, as well as the promotion of activities aimed at socio-occupational reintegration and the prevention of self-harm and suicides in cells.

Conclusion

The new National Plan against racism, xenophobia, and intolerance represents a necessary step for an Italy that has already experienced strong demographic change, but still needs to perfect its tools for social inclusion. The result of a collective effort, the National Plan is configured not only as a programmatic document but also as an operational tool to support institutions and civil society in promoting substantial equality, human dignity, and full inclusion for all. Through a permanent multi-level governance model, the implementation of the Plan will be monitored over time to ensure its effectiveness and impact on the territory.

The success of this ambitious program will lie in its ability to transform its programmatic lines into concrete changes, through constant monitoring by the State and the active involvement of territorial networks.