Marta Martinelli is a nonresident scholar at Carnegie Europe, where she researches the EU’s role in addressing forgotten conflicts and how EU initiatives are perceived in non-European countries. Her fields of expertise include human rights, democracy, peacebuilding, and gender.
Before joining Carnegie, Martinelli was senior director of programs at the Center for Civilians in Conflict. Prior to this, she spent over a decade at the Open Society Foundations as head of the EU external relations team, acting deputy director, and senior policy officer for Africa. Previously, Martinelli was an advisor for the EU CSDP mission for Security Sector Reform in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Between 2005 and 2009, she advised the peacebuilding task force of the Belgian Directorate General for Development.
Martinelli was Bernheim Chair in peace and conflict studies at the Free University of Brussels and has held teaching assignments at the Institute of International Sociology in Gorizia, Italy, at the UNESCO Chair for Peaceful Conflict Resolution and Human Rights in Bujumbura, Burundi, and at the Egmont–Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels, Belgium.
She currently serves on the board of the Justice and Peace Commission, a Belgian NGO, and the Belgrade Center for Security Policy. She is also an active member of Women in International Security.
In this era of geopolitical competition, Europe believes it offers an approach based upon multilateralism and international solidarity. To convince others of this viable alternative, Europe must better understand perceptions in the Global South and improve its own international standing.
The EU’s inward-looking response to the coronavirus pandemic has dented the bloc’s credibility in the eyes of the Global South. To rebuild trust, the EU must renew its efforts in building more equal partnerships.
