Emma Bonino, a towering figure of the Italian radical movement, former minister, and leader of +Europa, has passed away at the age of 78 following a long battle with lung cancer and subsequent health complications. Throughout a half-century of unyielding activism alongside Marco Pannella, Bonino stood at the forefront of nearly every major civil rights battle in Italy and abroad, from championing the right to abortion and founding the CISA sterilization center in 1975 to fighting for the global abolition of the death penalty and female genital mutilation.
Her international footprint was defined by courageous, high-profile defiance: she was arrested in Poland during the 1980s for supporting Solidarity against the communist regime, detained in New York for distributing sterile syringes to protest medical prescription laws, and imprisoned by the Taliban in Afghanistan while serving as a European Commissioner. Domestically, her political career spanned multiple ministerial roles under center-left governments, including European Policy and International Trade under Prodi and Foreign Affairs under Letta. Across generations, she remained an unmatched institutional voice for human rights, gender equality, and European federalism.