Chief Observer

Emma Bonino is an Italian Member of the European Parliament, sitting on the Foreign Affairs Committee as well as being Vice President of the delegation of Mashreq countries. She was elected to the European Parliament in 1979, 1984 and 1999 and was Member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 1976 to 1995 when she was appointed European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, Fisheries, Consumer Policy, Consumer Health Protection and Food Safety. In this capacity, in 1997 she signed on behalf of the European Commission the Ottawa Anti-personnel Mines Convention and, in 1998, she was Head of the European Commission Delegation to the Rome Diplomatic Conference on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court.

She has also headed the Italian Government Delegations at the UN General Assembly on the “Moratorium on Death Penalty” in 1994, at the Inter-Governmental Conference of the Community of Democracies in Seoul in 2002 and to the Third Ministerial Conference in Santiago in 2005. In January 2005, Emma Bonino was elected chair of a national Committee composed of senior politicians and former Prime Ministers, appointed by the Italian Government, to supervise the allocation of funds pledged by citizens for Tsunami Relief.

Since 2003, she has been campaigning for ratification of the Maputo Protocol on “Women’s Rights in Africa.” This is part of her continuous work on international human rights, including “Stop FGM!,” a campaign to improve women’s rights in Africa, and “A flower for the women of Kabul,” an international initiative against discrimination of women in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Emma Bonino’s other major international commitments have included membership of the European Parliament’s delegation to the Darfur Region in Sudan in 2004 and her 2002 appointment as Chief Observer of the EU Election Observation Mission during Ecuador’s Presidential elections. She is an active member of the Transnational Radical Party, of which she was President (1991-93) and Secretary (1993-94). She has been a Board Member of the International Crisis Group since 1999. Emma Bonino currently divides her time between Europe and Egypt, where she is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the American University of Cairo.

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