Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović (; Grabar; born 29 April 1968) is a Croatian politician and diplomat who served as the president of Croatia from 2015 to 2020. She was the first woman to be elected to the office since the first multi-party elections in 1990 and independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. At 46 years of age, she was the youngest person to assume the presidency.
Before her election as President of Croatia, Grabar-Kitarović held a number of governmental and diplomatic posts. She was minister of European Affairs from 2003 to 2005, the first female minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration from 2005 to 2008, Croatian ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011 and assistant secretary general for public diplomacy at NATO under Secretaries General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Jens Stoltenberg from 2011 to 2014. She is a recipient of the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Award and a number of national and international awards, decorations, honorary doctorates and honorary citizenships.
Grabar-Kitarović was a member of the conservative Croatian Democratic Union party from 1993 to 2015 and was also one of three Croatian members of the Trilateral Commission, but she was required to resign both positions upon taking office as president in 2015, as Croatian presidents are not permitted to hold other political positions or party membership while in office. As president, she launched the Three Seas Initiative in 2015, together with Polish President Andrzej Duda. In 2017, Forbes magazine listed her as the world's 39th most powerful woman. In 2020, Grabar-Kitarović was elected a member of the International Olympic Committee.
Early life and education
Kolinda Grabar was born on 29 April 1968 in Rijeka, Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia, to Dubravka and Branko Grabar. She was raised mainly in her parents' village of Lopača, just north of Rijeka, where the family owned a butcher shop and a ranch. As a high school student, she entered a student exchange program and at 17 moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, subsequently graduating from Los Alamos High School in 1986.
Upon her return to Yugoslavia, she enrolled at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, graduating in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish languages and literature. From 1995 to 1996, she attended the Diploma Course at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. In 2000 she obtained a master's degree in international relations from the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Zagreb.
In 2002–2003, she attended George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs as a Fulbright scholar. She also received a Luksic Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University and was a visiting scholar at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
In December 2015, Grabar-Kitarović began her doctoral studies in international relations at the Zagreb Faculty of Political Science.
Career
In 1992, Grabar-Kitarović became an advisor to the international cooperation department of the Ministry of Science and Technology. In 1993 she joined the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). In the same year she transferred to the Foreign ministry, becoming an advisor. She became the head of the North American department of the Foreign ministry in 1995 and held that post until 1997. That year she began to work at the Croatian embassy in Canada as a diplomatic councilor until October 1998, and then as a minister-councilor.
When Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDP) came to power after 2000 elections Tonino Picula became minister of Foreign Affairs. After taking office he immediately started to remove politically appointed staff that had been appointed by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) to high-ranking diplomatic positions. Grabar-Kitarović was ordered to return to Croatia from Canada within next six weeks, which she at first refused to do because she was pregnant and had already made plans to give birth in Canada, however she eventually decided to return after being strongly pressured by the ministry to do so. During her stay in the hospital, she applied for Fulbright scholarship for studying international relations and security policy. She eventually moved to the United States and enrolled at George Washington University. After graduating, she returned to Croatia and continued to live in Rijeka.
Two years later, she was elected to the Croatian Parliament from the seventh electoral district as a member of the Croatian Democratic Union in the 2003 parliamentary elections. With the formation of the new government led by HDZ chairman Ivo Sanader she became Minister of European integration, which entailed the commencement of negotiations regarding Croatia's accession to the European Union.
After the separate ministries of Foreign Affairs and European Integration were merged in 2005 Grabar-Kitarović was nominated to become minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration. She was confirmed by the Parliament and sworn in on 17 February 2005. Her main task as foreign minister was to guide Croatia into the European Union and NATO. On 18 January 2005, she became head of the State Delegation for Negotiations on the Croatian accession to the European Union. Furthermore, on 28 November 2005 she was elected by the international community to preside over the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention's Sixth Meeting of the States Parties, or Ottawa Treaty, held that year in Zagreb. Grabar-Kitarović was the first woman to be named president of the Ottawa Treaty.
Following the HDZ's victory in the 2007 parliamentary election and the subsequent formation of the Second Sanader Cabinet, she was reappointed as foreign minister, but was suddenly removed from the position on 12 January 2008. The exact reason for her removal is not known. Gordan Jandroković succeeded her.
On March 8, 2008, while the President of Croatia was Stjepan Mesić, she became the Croatian ambassador to the United States, where she replaced Neven Jurica. She served as ambassador until 4 July 2011.
On October 24, 2008, Grabar-Kitarović joined President George W. Bush and NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer during the signing of NATO accession protocols in the East Room of the White House, in support of the nations of Albania and Croatia joining the NATO alliance.
On May 6, 2010, the Croatian Embassy held a reception to celebrate women diplomats at the Croatian Embassy, which was attended by ambassadors to the U.S. from Croatia, India, Liechtenstein, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Senegal, and Antigua and Barbuda. The event was opened by Grabar-Kitarović by discussing the importance of taking small steps when it comes to mentoring.
In 2010, the Croatian Embassy in Washington, DC discovered that Grabar-Kitarović's husband, Jakov, had been continually filmed while using an official embassy car. A member of the embassy's security staff had followed and filmed Kitarović, recording footage that was posted on YouTube. As a result, Foreign Minister Gordan Jandroković launched an internal investigation into the unauthorized filming of members of the diplomatic staff and their families by a member of the embassy's security staff. A member of the embassy's security staff who had filmed her family was fired.
In 2011, Grabar-Kitarović was appointed Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy at NATO, the first woman to hold the position. Her task was to take care of the "communication strategy" and to "bring NATO closer to the common people". Her colleagues at NATO often referred to her as SWAMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed). She served until 2 October 2014.
She was invited to join the Trilateral Commission and became an official member in April 2013.
Support for 2014–2016 Croatian war veterans tent protest
During her presidential candidacy, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović supported protesting war veterans, despite the fact that the group of protesters near the central tent blocked the traffic and brought bottles of gasoline on Savska street which they apparently threatened to ignite if the police refused to back off. This support for war veterans, regardless threats of violence, was considered an unacceptable populist posture in order to gain the support of more of the right-leaning electorate in the upcoming presidential election.
2014–15 presidential candidacy
Croatian daily newspaper Jutarnji List published an article in September 2012 stating that Grabar-Kitarović was being considered as a possible candidate for the 2014–15 Croatian presidential election by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). It was confirmed in mid-2014 that she was to become the party's official candidate, going up against incumbent Ivo Josipović and newcomers Ivan Vilibor Sinčić and Milan Kujundžić. In the first round of election in December 2014 Grabar-Kitarović won 37.2% of the vote, second to Josipović who received 38.5%, while Sinčić and Kujundžić won 16.4% and 6.3% of the vote respectively. Since no candidate received more than 50% of the vote, a run-off election was scheduled between the top two candidates, Josipović and Grabar-Kitarović, in two weeks time.
Grabar-Kitarović contested the presidential election held in December 2014 and January 2015 as the only female candidate (out of four in total), finishing as the runner-up in the first round and thereafter proceeding to narrowly defeat incumbent president Ivo Josipović in the second round (by a margin of 1.48%). Furthermore, as the country had previously also had a female prime minister, Jadranka Kosor, from 2009 until 2011, Grabar-Kitarović's election as president led to Croatia's inclusion in a small group of parliamentary republics which have had both a female head of state and head of government.
The run-off took place on 11 January 2015, with Grabar-Kitarović winning 50.7% of the vote. She thereby became Croatia's first female post-independence head of state and the country's first conservative president in 15 years.Croatians Elect Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic as Their First Female President. The New York TimesEma Derossi-Bjelajac served as President of the Presidency of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, a constituent republic of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia and thus held a position equivalent to a head of state She was ceremonially sworn into office on 15 February, and assumed office officially at midnight on 19 February 2015.
Upon election, Grabar-Kitarović became the first woman in Europe to defeat an incumbent president running for reelection, as well as the second woman in the world to do so, after Violeta Chamorro of Nicaragua in 1990. She is also the first candidate of any gender to defeat an incumbent Croatian president. In addition, Grabar-Kitarović is the only presidential candidate to date to have won a Croatian presidential election without having won the most votes in the first round of elections, as she lost it by 1.24% or 21,000 votes. Furthermore, the 1.114 million votes she received in the second round is the lowest number of votes for any winning candidate in a presidential election in Croatia and the 1.48% victory margin against Josipović is the smallest in any such election to date.
Presidency (2015–2020)
Less than nine months into Grabar-Kitarović's term the European migrant crisis began to escalate with large numbers of migrants entering Greece and Macedonia and crossing from Serbia into Hungary, with the latter beginning the construction of a fence on its southern border as a result. In September 2015, after Hungary constructed a fence and closed its border with Serbia, the flow of migrants was redirected towards Croatia, causing over 21,000 migrants to enter the country by 19 September, with the number rising to 39,000 immigrants, while 32,000 migrants exited Croatia, leaving through Slovenia and Hungary. She appointed Andrija Hebrang her commissioner for the refugee crisis.