Emma Bonino was born in Bra (Turin) on March 9th 1948. She graduated in Modern Languages at the University of Milan in 1972.

After a brief experience in student politics, in 1975 she founded, together with Adele Faccio, the CISA (Centre for Information on Sterilization and Abortion) which constituted from its beginning the most important body in the campaign that brought a more humane and civil legislation regarding abortion, until then a lucrative business on the part of doctors and of private sectors. During this campaign she came across the Radical Party, becoming an active militant and leader. In June 1975, together with other militants in favour of legalization of abortion, she suffered a sensational arrest for civil disobedience.

In June 1976 she was elected to the Italian Parliament and two years later, together with the Italian Radicals, she promoted the first initiatives, parliamentary and otherwise, against the nuclear option: these initiatives then led to the gathering of signatures for the antinuclear referendum promoted by the Radical Party.

In June 1979 she was re-elected to the Italian Parliament and also entered the European Parliament, for the first time elected by universal suffrage. In addition to an intense parliamentary activity, she was among the first, together with Marco Pannella, to devote herself to fighting famine in the world, the "holocaust of our time". She participated in a number of civil, political and parliamentary initiatives in order to obtain from the various Parliaments new laws and adequate budgets with the objective of saving the lives of millions of people from the third and fourth worlds, so badly affected by the drama of under-development.

In August 1979 she took part in the World Food Council and, in 1981, as founder member of the Association "Food and Disarmament International", she was amongst the promoters of the "Nobel Prize-Winners' Manifesto" which fixed new important goals at international level. In the same year she took part, within the United Nations proceedings, in the Paris Conference on under-developed countries and in the North-South Cancùn Summit. Still in relation to the famine issue she organized conferences and assemblies within the framework of the International Council of Parliamentarians for Global Action. Many of these initiatives were accompanied by personal nonviolent actions, including hunger and thirst strikes.

In July 1981 she was elected President of the Radical Parliamentary Group. Re-elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies

in June 1983, she resigned shortly afterwards to dedicate herself entirely to the Rome Conference entitled "The poor do not eat theories", held during Holy Week in 1984. A few months later, in March 1985, this campaign led to the presentation of a white paper which proposed the allocation of one billion dollars for the salvation, in the following eighteen months, of the highest possible number of people dying of hunger: public opinion finally started to be informed on the gravity of the problem, until then ignored by Government and opposition politicians. In May 1985 she took over from Jean Fabre in the position of Secretary General of the "Food and Disarmament International".

In 1986 she was re-elected to the European as well as to the Italian Parliament. She then promoted many campaigns for the defence of the human, civil and political rights of individuals and oppressed minorities, in particular the campaign for the "refuzniks", that is for the application of the Helsinki Treaty with respect to the Russian Jews who were barred from leaving the Soviet Union, organizing demonstrations in the major European capitals and even in Jerusalem, in addition to parliamentary action in the Italian and European Parliaments. During the campaign in favour of dissidents of the Soviet bloc, she was arrested in Warsaw and Prague.

As the Party, with increasing determination and clarity, was defining itself as a transnational body, the attention of its leaders and of Emma Bonino focused on what has become one of the main campaigns of recent years, the abolition of the death penalty in the world, for which purpose an International Parliamentary League has been constituted. Also, under the pressure of the events in former Yugoslavia, urgent intiatives have been taken in favour of the Republics of Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Kosovo.

Emma Bonino was re-elected to the Italian Parliament in 1992, where she is currently Deputy Speaker. For many years President of the Transnational Radical Party, in the XXXVI Congress (February 1993) she was elected Secretary of the Party, a function that she will officially assume at the meeting of the General Council that will be held shortly in Sofia.