
During the last legislature, Emma Bonino served as Vice President of the Italian Senate. Until April 2008 she served as Minister for for International Trade and European Affairs and before she was member of the European Parliament. Since 2001, she has gone back and forth between
the EU offices and Cairo since December 2001. She has regularly carried out the work connected to her
parliamentary mandate, yet in Cairo was able to attend lessons in the
Arabic language, so that today she can follow the Al-Jazeera
broadcasts and read the main Middle East daily papers. Since March
2003 she has managed the Arab press review for Radio Radicale, a
unique initiative on the Italian information scene. Thus she became
one of the most authoritative experts and commentators on problems in
the area, having read them with the eyes of an activist who endeavours
for democracy to be installed in those regions, avoiding both
unilateralism (though necessary) of “preventive wars” and the
explosion of a very dangerous “war of civilisations”. It is from this
viewpoint and with this urgency that in January 2004, with the NGO “No
Peace Without Justice” and in collaboration with the Yemen government,
she dove into organising the first regional inter-governmental
conference on democracy, human rights and the role of the
International Criminal Court ever held in the Arab world. Emma Bonino
had already travelled to Yemen in 2003: the legislative elections were
taking place, and she told President Ali Abdullah Saleh that she was
worried because the women’s participation in the campaign was
significantly lower than in the 1993 campaign. But the seed had been
sown: more than 850 Arab and western personalities, 37 ministers,
about a hundred members of parliament and exponents of the civilised
society of 25 Arab and African countries were able to discuss topics
never faced before in a meeting of this type and level. Among those
present were the Secretary General of the Arab League Amr Moussa, the
Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations for Political
Affairs Danilo Turk, the General Director for External Relations of
the European Commission Eneko Landaburu, the Prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo, the Secretary General
of the Islamic Conference Organisation Abdelouahed Belkeziz, and
prominent representatives of non governmental associations and
organisations. The Conference was held under the auspices of the
European Union, with contributions from the European Commission and
from the governments of Canada, France, Germany, Ireland (EU turn
President), Italy, Holland, United Kingdom, Switzerland and the UNDP
(United Nations Development Programme), and concluded with the “Sana’a
Declaration” signed by all the delegations present. Emma Bonino and
the Transnational Radical Party had even more ambitious projects. In
November 2002, Emma Bonino, representing the Italian government,
participated in Seoul in the second ministerial conference of the
“Community of Democracies”, an informal union of states which, on the
basis of a document adopted by the “Convening Group”, had the goal of
working to create “World Organisation of Democracies”, in order to
reinforce civil and political liberties in the world. In the crisis of
supranational institutions (the UN in the front row) a strategy was
needed to give democracies the strength to stand up to the assault of
fundamentalisms, terrorism, and the return to the nationalisms of the
past century. It was a difficult undertaking, but day by day it proved
ever more necessary. Most of the attention of the Radicals and Emma
Bonino herself will certainly be aimed at it, starting from the
European Parliament. In an exemplary manner, Emma went to Ecuador from
September to November 2002, leading a mission of observers that the
European Union had sent to monitor the presidential, legislative and
administrative elections. Emma Bonino’s commitment dates far back. In
1976 (for the first time in its twenty years of political history the
Radical Party presented their own lists for the Italian legislative
elections) she was elected deputy, along with Marco Pannella, Adele
Faccio and Mauro Mellini. She was only 28 years old. It was during the
days of the battles for civil rights and Emma had collaborated with
the CISA – the Centre for information, sterilisation and abortion
founded by Adele Faccio – where clandestine clinics, using the Karman
method, helped women who were unable to pay for the “golden spoon” or
fly abroad in order to abort. In June 1975, after a period of
inaction, Emma Bonino turned herself over to the hands of justice for
procured abortion and the campaign was the priority of the Radical
Party which already the year before had won the referendum to
introduce divorce in Italy. Since then her presence in the Italian
Parliament has been nearly uninterrupted, and marked by initiatives,
not just on a parliamentary level, which brought her strong political
and human credit. Thus, during a March 1999 assembly of the Radicals
for “liberal revolution and the United States of Europe” she could
accept a surprising candidature to the Presidency of the Republic. In
the European elections in June of that year she was the list leader of
the “Lista Bonino”, which obtained 8.5% of votes and seven deputies.
She was elected political secretary of the Radical Party in 1993.
While her “Italian” activity expanded and developed in various sectors
(energy policy, information policy, justice policy, etc.), in 1979 -
“International Year of the Child” – a UNICEF report was published with
blood-chilling estimates that within the year 40 million people – of
which 40% children – would die. Marco Pannella began the campaign
against “extermination by hunger in the southern part of the world”,
asking governments for special intervention on the most urgent,
necessary situations. Emma Bonino was immediately involved in the
initiative. Thus began the Radical parliament member’s work in
“international” politics. In April 1981, along with 113 Nobel
signatories to the Radical appeal against extermination by hunger, she
founded the International Food and Disarmament association to
coordinate international activities on this front. In February 1986,
she became its secretary and launched the Manifest of Heads of State
in defence of the “right to life” and the “life of right”. During an
official encounter, Marco Pannella illustrated to Pope John Paul II
the initiatives that had been undertaken. In the same year she
promoted an international campaign for the defence of human rights in
Eastern Europe, in particular in favour of the “refuzniks”, the Soviet
Jews who were denied the right to emigrate to Israel. In January 1987,
she demonstrated in Warsaw against the Jaruzelski dictatorship, in
favour of Solidarnosc. She was arrested and expelled. In May 1991, the
Italian Chamber of Deputies approved a motion signed first by Emma
Bonino committing the government to prevent the proliferation of
conventional weapons and in particular landmines. In November 1993,
Emma Bonino handed the Secretary General of the United Nations Boutros
Ghali 25,000 signatures collected worldwide in the appeal for setting
up a special court to try crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.
In June of the following year the Dalai Lama visited Italy: thanks to
the Radicals he was received by head offices of State. It was a stage
in Emma Bonino’s commitment for the rights and freedom of the Tibet
people and for democracy in China. Her international activity obtained
new possibilities for expression when, in January 1995, the Italian
government appointed her European Commissioner for humanitarian aid,
consumer policy and fishing. It was the first time a Radical held a
position with executive political functions. Two days from taking
office, she flew to the former Yugoslavia, denouncing Europe’s
impotence and the UN’s disinterest with respect to the chronic state
of the Balkan war and the ethnical cleansing going on. After the fall
of Srebrenitza she went to Tuzla, where thousands of refugees were
flocking: only women and children. The alarm is sounded – which will
turn into dramatic reality – about the risk that the Srebrenitza men
were being massacred by Mladic’s troops: “We are facing genocide; more
than 4,000 people are unaccounted for, there is no news of 8,000
people. They have disappeared”. From Europe she keeps looking towards
Africa. Refugee camps stretching as far as the eye can see in the Goma
region of Zaire (2 million Rwanda Hutus) are the tragic inheritance of
an ethnic conflict culminated in the 1994 genocide. Emma Bonino went
to the region in March 1995 to support the refugees’ right to
humanitarian aid and to stress Europe’s financial commitment. The
following year she represented the European Union in the Europe/USA
joint humanitarian mission in the Great Lakes region; the Americans
were represented by Brian Atwood, in charge of the US agency for
cooperation, USAID. The analysis by the two major donors of
humanitarian aid converged: the crisis was no longer sustainable and
required an urgent political intervention by the UN or the major
powers. Unfortunately the chancelleries didn’t listen to the appeal.
During the same trip, Emma Vonino visited Somalia, a country at the
extreme limit and again in the hands of the warlords (near Kisimayo,
Bonino’s humanitarian convoy came under the fire of Aidid’s warriors),
and southern Sudan, violating the air embargo imposed by the Khartoum
regime, in order to revive the humanitarian aid directed at victims of
a “forgotten” crisis. Subsequently Emma Bonino met with the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, on a visit to Brussels to
find a solution, at least momentary, for the Rwanda refugees. She
returned to the tormented Great Lakes region in November 1996 and
January 1997, while an offensive was going on in Zaire piloted from
Rwanda and Uganda to knock out Mobutu’s regime. Among the military
objectives was the removal of the refugee camps: it would be a huge
Hutu hunt, taking place in the tropical forests without witnesses.
Emma defended these refugees’ rights to humanitarian aid, searched for
signs of them and found about two hundred thousand in the improvised
Tingi-Tingi camp. She says it is “a people who don’t exist”. During a
humanitarian mission in February 1999 in Guinea Bissau, theatre of
armed clashes since June 1998 between Nino Vieira’s government and a
rebel “junta” led by General Mené, the two opponents accepted to meet
– for the first time in Bissau – in the presence of Emma Bonino. This
was a step towards the definitive assent to a peace plan blocked for
months. Subsequently she took a helicopter to Freetown, the capital of
Sierra Leone besieged by rebels, where she met President Kabbah. She
visited the Connaught hospital which received hundreds of civilians of
all ages mutilated by the machetes of the Revolutionary United Front
rebels. “Today, Sierra Leone,” she said upon her return to Europe, “is
a living monument to the stupidity of man’s violence. It is the
frontier of new barbarian acts, against which there is no other
antidote than humanitarian reasoning and solidarity.” The quadrants
are various, the chances for intervention are various, but always
priority. For Emma Bonino it is the commitment to promoting civil
rights and liberty, without which – as she often repeats in assonance
with Amartya Sen – there is no possibility or hope even of economic
development. During a humanitarian mission to Cuba in May 1995, she
met Fidel Castro and, before the European diplomatic corps, put to him
the serious problem of respect for human rights, above all those of
the regime’s opponents. Upon her departure, Castro liberated six
political prisoners who had been the object of an international
campaign promoted by Emma Bonino when she was the Secretary of the
Transnational Radical Party. On the anniversary of the Chinese
occupation of Tibet, in March 1996, she participated in the first
European march for Tibetan freedom organised by the Transnational
Radical Party. In August, during an official mission in Burma, she
semi-secretly paid a visit to the historical leader of Burma’s
opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize 1991. She also went to
Thailand to take stock of the situation of the Karen refugees at risk
of expulsion, and to Cambodia for the problem of landmines that infest
the country. That same month she met with Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi
and discussed the civil rights situation in Asia. An ambitious project
took off: sustaining the growth of democracy in the world through
legal actions penalising the use of violence and the most serious
anti-democratic practices. In 1998 No Peace Without Justice and the
Radical Party organised various conferences where Emma Bonino
participated actively (Paris, Malta, Montevideo, Atlanta, Rome, New
York, Dakar), to stimulate the interest of United Nations countries
toward setting up a criminal court with international jurisdiction on
war crimes. In June a special diplomatic conference was finally
called, to be held in Rome. Representing the European Commission, Emma
Bonino took on a role of political impulse and mediation. In spite of
resistance and difficulties up to the last hour, on 17 July 1998, 120
countries approved the Statute of the International Court on War
Crimes. The next day, she celebrated the success of the conference at
the Capitol with Kofi Annan, UN General Secretary. Again on the topic
of development of democracy, in July 2003 she organised in Rome, at
the Palazzo Giustiniani, a round table on the role of the
international community in promoting democracy and the state of right,
with the participation of, among others, the former prime minister of
Sudal Sadek el Mahdi, the former prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh
Hasina, the former French minister of health Bernard Kouchner, Saad
Eddin Ibrahim – Egyptian democratic intellectual – and the president
of the committee for human rights of the Shura Council (the high
chamber of Yemen parliament) Mohamed Al-Tayeb. In October 1998, she
received from the hands of Prince Felipe de Borbone the prestigious
“Prince of Asturias” award, and dedicated it to the leader of Burma’s
opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi. She requested and obtained sharing the
award with a group of women active in the field of human rights. Thus
she ended up on the award stage with Fatiha Boudiaf, widow of the
Algerian president assassinated in 1992; Olayinka Koso-Thomas,
Nigerian and fighting for more than 15 years for the abolition of
female mutilation; Graca Machel, President of the UN Commission for
the defence of child war victims; Rigoberta MenchĂą, Nobel Peace Prize
1992; Fatana Ishaq Gailani, founder of the Council of Afghan Women;
and Somali Mam, President of the Cambodian Association fighting child
prostitution. Contacts were reinforced with many of them in following
years on aims linked to the campaigns against female genital
mutilation, the rights of Afghan women and the fight against child
prostitution. As European Commissioner, Emma Bonino has had to tackle
complex situations. In February 1995, an argument exploded between
Canada and the EU about regulations on halibut fishing. A Spanish
fishing boat in international waters is threatened by cannon fire from
the Canadian Navy. The Fishing Commissioner defines the event “an act
of international piracy”. Even though the diplomatic clash is violent,
in April Emma Bonino succeeds in reaching an agreement with the
Canadians after tough negotiations. A few weeks later Morocco
interrupts fishing agreements with the EU. After negotiations carried
out in the most delicate phases directly with King Hassan II, in
November a new agreement was signed. In February 1997, Emma Bonino was
appointed “European Personality 1996”, one year after Helmut Kohl, by
a jury chaired by Jacques Delors, in recognition of her humanitarian
courage and her faith in the future of European integration. In March,
the “mad cow” epidemic places the Brussels Commission in serious
difficulty. President Jacques Santer decides to entrust Emma Bonino
with managing the crisis and assigns her the competence in food safety
matters. Emma Bonino negotiates severe measures with the United
Kingdom for control of the disease, avoids censure by the European
Parliament and gradually establishes consumer trust again for meat
consumption. The Middle East enters in her sphere of interest, where
threatening clouds are gathering, including Iraq’s default in
respecting international and UN warnings and sanctions. During a
humanitarian mission to Iraq in August 1997, she visited Iraqi
Kurdistan (she was not authorised to go to the southern part of the
country). She met with representatives of the Baghdad government,
among them the Vice Premier Tarek-Aziz, reminding him that the harm
done to the population by 30 years of dictatorship greatly exceeds
that caused by 6 years of “western” embargo. In September, she
organised a mission to Afghanistan to check on the progress of the
projects of the Commission’s humanitarian office and in Kabul is held
hostage by the Talebans for four hours. Upon her return to Europe, she
denounced the regime of terror that reigns in that tormented country,
stressing in particular the condition of women and the policy of
religious repression. She promoted the international campaign “A
Flower for the Women of Kabul”, which was to crown the 8th of March
the following year. When the Taleban regime fell, while an
international conference was going on in Bonn to assign a provisional
government to liberated Afghanistan, she launched with the
Transnational Radical Party a campaign in favour of women being
present in the new government. More than six thousand members of
parliament, ministers, personalities and citizens from over one
hundred countries took part in the day of fasting planned for December
1, 2001. It was the first global satyagraha of Radical history. Two
women are elected to the interim executive and one of its
representatives, Soraya Rahim, minister for women’s affairs, spoke at
the 18th Congress of the Transnational Radical Party (Geneva, 4-7
April 2002). In December 1997, Emma Bonino represented the European
Commission at the Ottawa Conference for signing the treaty banning
landmines: the “weapons of cowards”. During her humanitarian missions,
in Iraq as in Afghanistan, in Cambodia as in Bosnia, she had met
hundreds of victims of mines. As early as 1994, as speaker at the
Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, she obtained
the Italian Parliament’s unilateral decision for a total ban on
landmines. In March 1999, to put an end to the ethnic repression of
the Belgrade troops in Kosovo, NATO began a series of dissuasive
bombings. Ethnic Albanian refugees were counted in the hundreds of
thousands. Emma Bonino and Javier Solana, Secretary General of NATO,
met in the NATO headquarters in view of Emma Bonino’s humanitarian
mission in the region, aimed at starting up functional coordination
between those responsible for military operations and those involved
in the humanitarian effort. Emma Bonino visited the border stations in
Albania and Macedonia where the Kosovar people were flocking: “A mass
deportation of human beings with no identity, who look towards a
future that seems to be a dark chasm”, she said upon her return. She
set to work to intensify the European Union’s humanitarian effort and
promote coordination among international interventions. On 27
December, as we have already said, she went to Cairo. In the European
Parliament she was a member of the Foreign Commission and
Sub-Commission for the Mashrek countries and Gulf states. In May 2002,
she went with a parliamentary delegation to Saudi Arabia and Yemen,
stressing the political need (Europe’s as well) to invest as much as
possible so that the young Yemenite parliamentary democracy can make
progress, reinforcing the structures of the state of right it chose.
In June she returned to Kabul for the inauguration of the Loya Jirga –
the first Afghan legislative assembly – to participate upon invitation
of the country’s feminists in an international conference titled
“March of Women for Afghanistan”, and ratify an “Afghan paper of
women’s rights” to be proposed at the meeting of the tribe chiefs.
From the beginning she followed the legal events of the Egyptian
democratic intellectual Saad Eddin Ibrahim, arrested on 26 June 2000
and accused of four crimes, among them fraud and corruption. He was
condemned to seven years in prison for having “prejudiced the state
image”, among other things. The sentence was annulled in February
2003, thanks to the international campaign Emma Bonino participated
in, obtaining the support of the European Parliament. Emma Bonino has
paid particular attention in recent years to the new aspects of
“women’s affairs”. She began her citizen’s commitment with the themes
of divorce and abortion, so this return was natural even in a
different context: the international one. According to the WHO
estimates, 130 women and young girls in the world have been the
victims of the cruel practice of female genital mutilation, and every
year two million of them risk being subjected to it. In June 2000 the
European Radical deputies presented a proposal for a resolution of
report, and in November of that year they organised a “Day of
Knowledge”. Thanks to a lucky and very useful encounter of political
synergy with AIDOS, the Association of Italian Women for Development
presided by Daniela Colombo, active for years in this sector, on 10
December 2001, an international conference began a “Stop FGM” campaign
in the European Parliament – supporting the battle of African women
who have been struggling for more than 20 years, with much
determination yet just as much lack of synergetic possibilities and
international visibility. From 21 to 23 June 2003 StopFGM organised an
international conference in Cairo on the guidelines of a legislation
that set out the basis for the total eradication of this shameful
practice. Participants were the representatives of the governments of
the 28 countries concerned, the two top Egyptian religious
authorities, Imam Tantawi and the representative of the Coptic Church.
Also present was Suzanne Mubarak. The urgencies of international
policy and the new structures of the post-Saddam Middle East, still
being defined, induced her to return to Iraq seven years after her
previous visit. Accompanied by the Radical Euro-deputies Gianfranco
Dell’Alba and Marco Cappato, the visit took place from 21 to 24 March
2004, in coincidence with the first anniversary of the war. The first
stop was Nassiriya, where the Italian military contingent was
stationed. She met the Governor of the Dhi Qar province, Sabri al
Rumadyah, and a large delegation of local women. In the two following
days, the Radical delegation moved on to Baghdad for a meeting with
Ambassador Paul Bremer, American proconsul in Iraq, who illustrated
the more delicate passages of the transition of powers to a
provisional Iraqi government, and for meetings with the Iraqi
institutional representatives (members of the Interim Governing
Council and ministers of the provisional government), of every ethnic
group (Shia, Sunni, Kurd, Turcoman…), including Adnan Pachachi, likely
future Head of State and Raja Khuzai, who, when the new constitutional
text was being drawn up, did his utmost to see the rejection of
proposals inspired by ethnic-religious fundamentalism. The delegation
also met with representatives of civilian society, amongst them the
president of one of the associations most committed to women’s rights,
Widad Kareem. The message that emerged from all the meetings was one:
“we don’t like being occupied but we don’t want you to leave either”.
The need that emerged was not to abandon the Iraqis to their fate
after 25 years of dictatorship, to recompose a framework based on a
multilateral alternative, to ensure the minimum basic security so that
the economy could take off again, to guarantee a rapid but sustainable
passage of powers, to stem terrorism in the name of the
“indivisibility” of worldwide security. On their way home, the Radical
delegation stopped in Kuwait City where it met with the women’s
associations – in a country where women can’t even vote – to present
and agree on actions to support and promote liberal democracy,
starting from the principles already subscribed to by dozens of Arab
governments with the “Sana’a Declaration”. |