Cécile Kashetu Kyenge is an Italian politician and ophthalmologist. She was the Minister for Integration in the 2013–14 Letta Cabinet. From 2014 until 2018, she was a Member of the European Parliament. Kyenge is of Congolese descent. After moving to Italy in 1983 at the age of 19, she became a qualified ophthalmologist in Modena, Emilia-Romagna. She has founded an intercultural Association to promote mutual awareness, integration and cooperation between Italy and Africa, particularly in her country of birth, the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is also the spokesperson of the association "March First", which works to promote the rights of migrants in Italy. In February 2013 she was elected member of the Chamber of Deputies for the Democratic Party in Emilia-Romagna. Two months later she was appointed Minister for Integration in the grand coalition government formed by Enrico Letta, becoming Italy's first black cabinet minister. She supports the introduction of a Jus soli law to grant citizenship to children of immigrants born on Italian soil.
Biography
Kyenge was born in Kambove in the Democratic Republic of Congo on 28 August 1964. She arrived in Italy with a student visa in 1983. She has been married since 1994 to an Italian engineer, Domenico Grispino, and has two daughters named Giulia and Maisha. She lives in Castelfranco Emilia. She has a degree in medicine and surgery from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome. She is a specialist in ophthalmology at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. In 2002 she founded the Association for Intercultural DAWA, with the aim of promoting mutual understanding of different cultures and develop processes of awareness, integration and cooperation between Italy and Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo where Kyenge focuses mostly her efforts. Since September 2010 she has been the national spokesperson of the Italian association "March First" that works to promote the rights of migrants. She collaborates with various organizations and associations in national campaigns on the rights of citizenship. She collaborates with many Italian magazines, including Combonifem and Corriere Immigrazione, an online newspaper and a weekly journal on the culture of Italy of the present and future.
Political career
In 2004 Kyenge was elected in a district of the town of Modena for the Democrats of the Left and later became the provincial head of the Forum of International Cooperation and Immigration. On 7 June 2009 Kyenge was elected provincial councilor in Modena for the Democratic Party and joined the committee Welfare and social policies. She is also responsible for immigration policies in Emilia-Romagna for the Democratic Party. On 25 February 2013 Kyenge was elected member of the Chamber of Deputies for the PD in Emilia-Romagna.
Immediately after her election to the Italian Parliament, with the support of other signatories, she began to promote a plan for a law granting citizenship to children of immigrants born on Italian soil.
Minister for Integration, 2013–14
In April 2013 Kyenge was appointed Minister for Integration in the grand coalition government formed by Enrico Letta, becoming Italy's first black cabinet minister. Her ministerial nomination was repudiated in some circles on cultural and/or racial grounds, being met by racist insults from individual politicians belonging to the Northern League such as Roberto Calderoli, VP of the Italian Senate, who called her an orangutan, in addition to racist campaigns orchestrated by the New Force party and other far-right groups. Her treatment as Italy's first black minister has been described by The Economist as "shameful" with "limited condemnation". Writer and University of Tokyo Professor Flavio Rizzo further analysed the climate around Minister Kyenge in the context of Italian inability to relate to diversity and "the emergence of institutional racism".
