Emma Bonino, the protagonist of civil battles and humanitarian diplomacy

Emma Bonino was not only the protagonist of a season of civil battles in Italy, but also of the international scene, of humanitarian diplomacy and international justice. His gaze has reached the most difficult crisis theaters on the planet, embodying the radical vision of a universal and barrier-free law. A leader capable of imposing the strength of rights over the cold calculations of geopolitics.

Member of the European Parliament several times between 1979 and 2006, her international consecration occurred in the mid-1990s: appointed European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid in 1994, she transformed a previously bureaucratic office into a machine for rapid, flexible and courageous intervention. It manages the devastating crisis of the Great Lakes in Africa after the genocide in Rwanda and navigates the fratricidal conflicts in the Balkans, imposing humanitarian aid as the absolute priority of the community geopolitical agenda. The anecdote of the Sarajevo blankets remains emblematic when, during the dramatic siege of the Bosnian city, it clashed harshly with the bureaucratic delays of Brussels. And, to speed up the sending of blankets and medicines to the population exhausted by the frost, he signed the spending authorizations, assuming responsibility, surprising the officials.

In 1997 he took a risky step, flying to Kabul, while Western chancelleries ignored or underestimated the brutality of the first Taliban regime. She then traveled to Afghanistan to denounce gender apartheid and the total exclusion of women from public life.

But Emma Bonino's most lasting legacy perhaps lies in her tireless battle for global legality, convinced that peace could never ignore the punishment of war crimes. Through the instrument of the Transnational Radical Party and the NGO she founded, 'There is no peace without justice', she pushed the United Nations towards the establishment of a permanent tribunal. A milestone reached in 1998 in Rome with the birth of the Rome Statute which gave life to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Her deep connection with the Mediterranean basin and the Arab world pushed her, at the beginning of the 2000s, to make a radical life choice: moving to Cairo to study Arabic. This total immersion will characterize his subsequent government commitments in Italy, culminating in 2013 with his appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs (he had already been part of another government, the Prodi one, as head of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and EU Affairs from 2006 to 2008). At the Farnesina, Bonino addresses the complexity of the post-Arab Spring and the first, dramatic waves of the migratory crisis, maintaining the principle of European integration and multilateralism as the only possible compasses.

Bonino leaves behind the image of a "citizen of the world" who demonstrated in the field how human rights are not a theoretical exercise, but a political frontier to be defended every day. Emma Bonino remains the figure of a diplomat capable of speaking with the powerful of the Earth but always starting from the last in line. An "explosive presence" in Italian and European politics during her long career: this is how the weekly magazine Time defined her in an article dedicated to the men and women whose "ideas and energy" have had a "direct impact on Europe" at the turn of two millennia.