International political career
Bonino was elected to the European Parliament in 1979 and re-elected in 1984 and 1999. She served as the Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party in 1993–94 and the party's president in 1991–1993. In October 1994, she was appointed head of the Italian Government delegation to the UN General Assembly for the "Moratorium on death penalty" initiative. From 1994 to 1999, she was European Commissioner responsible for Consumer Policy, Fisheries and the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO). In this role she played a part in the 1995 Turbot War as head of the delegation of the European Commission. As a result of this, the total allowable catch of fish awarded to the EU was significantly reduced. In 1997, her field of competence was widened to include consumer health protection and food safety.
From 14 to 17 May 1998, she participated in the annual meeting of the Bilderberg Group at Turnberry, Scotland.
On 15 March 1999, together with all the Santer Commission, she resigned due to the accusations of fraud and mismanagement against commissioner Édith Cresson. The final report however leveled charges against most commissioners, including Bonino herself. In November 2002, she was appointed Head of the Italian Government delegation at the Inter-governmental Conference of the Community of Democracies in Seoul.
Along with Marco Pannella, another member of the Radical Party, Bonino has fought numerous battles for civil rights and individual liberty, mainly concerned with divorce, the legalisation of abortion, the legalisation of drugs, and for sexual and religious freedoms. She has fought for an end to capital punishment, against female genital mutilation, and the eradication of world hunger. In 1975, Bonino funded the information centre for abortion (CISA), and in 1997 she supported the international movement condemning the discrimination of females in Afghanistan, Un Fiore per le Donne di Kabul (A Flower for the Women of Kabul). Bonino was also a champion of the recognition of women's rights in the countries of the African Union through the Maputo protocol. She was a founder of the nongovernmental organizations No Peace Without Justice, which supports the international protection and promotion of human rights and democracy, and Nessuno Tocchi Caino (Let None Strike Cain), which is an international league that fights for the abolition of the death penalty.
In June 1999, she obtained a historic percentage of votes (8.5%) in the European elections (vs. the usual 2–3% that Radicals got in the previous and subsequent elections). Her list (Lista Bonino) won seven of 78 Italian seats in this election.
She supported the NATO intervention in Kosovo in the spring of 1999. From 1999 to 2004, the Lista Bonino was non-affiliated, as it was founded with a claim to not adhere to the traditional centre-left versus centre-right politics, rather remaining in the middle to maximize any potential bargaining power. In the case Emma Bonino and Others v Parliament and Council (Case T-40/04), the Emma Bonino List contested before the Court of Justice of the European Union that its exclusion from Community funding due to not qualifying as a party on the 'European level' was discriminatory. The court dismissed this argument as inadmissible, establishing that measures do not necessarily need to legally affect an applicant in order for the case to directly affect them. Since 2004, it is part of the ALDE group.
In 2002, Bonino in cooperation with the Associazione Italiana Donne per lo Sviluppo (AIDOS, Italian Association for the Development of Women), called an Italian Parliament meeting to discuss genital mutilation. Bonino led the ceremonies, which gathered medical experts, ambassadors, and politicians to review graphic information about the practice of female genital mutilation in African countries. During this meeting, Bonino recounted her travels through Somalia, Egypt, Tanzania, The Gambia, and Ethiopia, where she learned about these rural practices by meeting women who participated in projects to stop them. Many African women who suffered from genital mutilation discussed their firsthand experiences. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Prime Minister Berlusconi congratulated Bonino on her accomplishments in this cause and presented the leader of AIDOS with a check for the European Campaign.
In December 2001, she moved to Cairo with the objective of learning the Arabic language and culture. In March 2003, she started a daily review of the Arabic press on Radical Radio. In January 2004, she organized the "Regional Conference on Democracy, Human Rights and the role of the International Penal Court", the first for an Arabic country. She was a board member of the Arab Democracy Foundation.
Bonino was a board member of DARA until December 2012. In 2016, she was appointed by Erik Solheim, the Chairman of the Development Assistance Committee, to serve on the High Level Panel on the Future of the Development Assistance Committee under the leadership of Mary Robinson.
She wrote opinion editorials and commentaries for both the Inter Press Service News Agency and Project Syndicate, discussing contemporary international issues including Syrian refugees affecting Europe, abolishing the death penalty, relations between Iran and Europe, and the poor treatment of the indigenous people of South East Asia.
