page_title: Emma Bonino
section_title: International political career
hierarchical_section_title: Emma Bonino / International political career
caption_attribution_description: English: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino pose for a photo before their meeting in Rome, Italy, on May 9, 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
context_page_description: Emma Bonino OMRI, CdrLH is an Italian politician. She currently is a Senator for Rome. She served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2013 to 2014. Previously, she was a Member of the European Parliament and a member of the Senate of the Republic. She served in the government of Italy as minister of international trade from 2006 to 2008.
  She is a leading member of the Italian Radicals, a political party which describes itself "liberale, liberista e libertario". She graduated in modern languages and literature from Bocconi University in Milan in 1972.
  A veteran legislator in Italian politics and an activist for various reform policies, she was elected six times as deputy and two times as senator.
  She was the leader of More Europe, a liberal, european federalist party list she announced on December 2017, in the 2018 Italian general election.
context_section_description: Bonino was elected to the European Parliament in 1979 and re-elected in 1984 and 1999. She served as the Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party in 1993–94 and the party's president in 1991–1993. In October 1994, she was appointed head of the Italian Government delegation to the UN General Assembly for the "Moratorium on death penalty" initiative. From 1994 to 1999, she was European Commissioner responsible for Consumer Policy, Fisheries and the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO). In 1997, her field of competence was widened to include consumer health protection and food safety.
  On 15 March 1999, together with all the Santer Commission, she resigned due to the accusations of fraud and mismanagement against commissioner Édith Cresson. The final report however leveled charges against most commissioners, including Bonino herself. In November 2002, she was appointed Head of the Italian Government delegation at the Inter-governmental Conference of the Community of Democracies in Seoul.
  Along with Marco Pannella, another member of the Radical Party, Bonino has fought numerous battles for civil rights and individual liberty, mainly concerned with divorce, the legalisation of abortion, the legalisation of drugs, and for sexual and religious freedoms. She has fought for an end to capital punishment, against female genital mutilation, and the eradication of world hunger. In 1975, Bonino funded the information centre for abortion (CISA), and in 1997 she supported the international movement condemning the discrimination of females in Afghanistan, 'Un Fiore per le Donne di Kabul' (A Flower for the Women of Kabul). Bonino is also a champion of the recognition of women's rights in the countries of the African Union through the Maputo protocol. She is a founder of the nongovernmental organizations 'Non c'è Pace senza Giustizia' (No Peace Without Justice), which supports the international protection and promotion of human rights and democracy, and 'Nessuno Tocchi Caino' (Hands Off Cain), which is an international league that fights for the abolition of the death penalty.
  In June 1999, she obtained a historic percentage of votes (8.5%) in the European elections (vs. the usual 2–3% that Radicals got in the previous and subsequent elections). Her list (Lista Bonino) won seven of 78 Italian seats in this election.
  Emma Bonino supported the NATO intervention in Kosovo in the spring of 1999. From 1999 to 2004, the Lista Bonino was non-affiliated, as it was founded with a claim to not adhere to the traditional centre-left versus centre-right politics, rather remaining in the middle to maximize any potential bargaining power. In the case "Emma Bonino and Others v Parliament and Council (Case T-40/04)", the Liste Emma Bonino contested before the Court of Justice of the European Union that its exclusion from Community funding due to not qualifying as a party on the 'European level' was discriminatory. The court dismissed this argument as inadmissible, establishing that measures do not necessarily need to legally affect an applicant in order for the case to directly affect them. Since 2004, it is part of the ALDE group.
  In 2002, Bonino in cooperation with the Associazione Italiana Donne per lo Sviluppo (AIDOS,  Italian Association for the Development of Women), called an Italian Parliament meeting to discuss genital mutilation. Bonino led the ceremonies, which gathered medical experts, ambassadors, and politicians to review graphic information about the practice of female genital mutilation in African countries. During this meeting, Bonino recounted her travels through Somalia, Egypt, Tanzania, The Gambia, and Ethiopia, where she learned about these rural practices by meeting women who participated in projects to stop them. Many African women who suffered from genital mutilation discussed there firsthand experiences. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Prime Minister Berlusconi congratulated Bonino on her accomplishments in this cause and presented the leader of AIDOS with a check for the European Campaign.
  In December 2001, she m
caption: Emma Bonino with the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, before their meeting in Rome.
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