Professional Profile

Jolanda Brunetti started her diplomatic career after winning a competition for the Foreign Service in Rome in 1967. After initial assignments to Malaysia (1969-1972) and New York (1972-1974), where she pursued her interest in the policies and development issues of developing countries and the UN system, she was appointed Italian Ambassador to Burma from 1980 to 1984, becoming the first woman to assume these functions in the Italian Foreign Service. Having had the opportunity during this period to learn about the resources and potentials of the South-East Asia region, and of East Asia as a whole, the subsequent assignment to Paris OECD in 1984 was another important step towards the understanding of the international environment and development mechanisms, conducive to mutual benefit and growth. Back in the Ministry in Rome in 1988, she was promoted Head of the Technical Unit of the Italian Cooperation Department with more than 100 staff members, where she continued to focus on development principles and apply them to concrete problems. After the dissolution of the USSR, her next assignment as Head of Mission was from 1995 to 2000 to Uzbekistan, extended in 1996 to Tajikistan, both countries chosen to complete her picture of overall Asian economic situation, policy approaches and international relations. From 2000 to 2004, her final assignment as Ambassador to Ukraine brought her in close contact with a new level of development problems associated with the revival of heavy former soviet industries and agricultural institutions, which had proved unproductive. Her most recent assignments, as Special Coordinator of the reform of the justice system in Afghanistan or Head of OSCE/ODIHR appraisal missions to Uzbekistan and Slovakia, were focused on the improvement of the functioning of the justice system and the related public administration, and the evaluation of the democratic progress in the electoral context respectively.