Giuliana Sgrena - Background and Career

Background and Career

Giuliana Sgrena was born and raised in Masera, Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, a town of fewer than 1000 people that had seen intense fighting during World War II between Italian partisans and German soldiers. Her father, Franco Sgrena, was a noted partisan during the war and later became an activist in the communist railway union.

Sgrena studied in Milan where she became involved in leftist politics. She became a professed pacifist and from 1980 worked for Guerra e Pace, a weekly publication edited by Michelangelo Notarianni.

In 1988, she joined the communist paper Il Manifesto and, as a war correspondent, has since covered conflicts such as the Algerian Civil War, the Somalian and the Afghanistan conflicts. During her travels, she reported extensively on topics from the Horn of Africa, the Maghreb and the Middle East.

As a campaigner for women's rights, she has been particularly concerned with the conditions of women under Islam. About this topic she wrote Alla scuola dei Taleban ("At the Taliban's school"), ISBN 88-7285-266-8.

She opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. At the start of the war she went to Baghdad to cover the bombing of that city, for which work she was awarded the title Cavaliere del Lavoro on her return to Italy.