Ngô Đình Lệ Quyên

On April 16, 2012, she was killed in a traffic accident on the way to work in Rome, Italy. Her only sister, Ngô Đình Lệ Thủy was killed in a traffic accident in Longjumeau, France almost exactly 45 years earlier.

In 2008, the Italian Interior Ministry awarded her Italian citizenship by decree of President of the Republic, for Exceptional interest of the State and outstanding services to Italy.

As a result of her activity in the field, she was involved by Caritas Italy in the process of establishing a national reception system which resulted in the National Asylum Programme (PNA) (which became in 2002 the national System of Protection of Asylum Seekers and Refugees — SPRAR), in connection with the Ministry of Interior, UNHCR, ANCI (National Association of Italian Municipalities).

In 2000, she was a member of the Italian Ecclesial Committee for the remission of international debt of poor countries.

In 1998, she began her cooperation with the Superior School of Administration of the Interior (SSAI), where she was enlisted in the teachers' register.

In December 1996, she was promoted as the person in charge of the Immigration Area of the Diocesan Caritas of Rome, coordinating and managing services destined to immigrant citizens (counselling centres, reception centres for men, women, families, nurseries). In this position she interacted constantly with public institutions at the local, national and international levels.

In November 1992, she was introduced to don Luigi di Liegro, Director of Caritas Rome, by professor Saulle. She then began her activity in Caritas as Coordinator of the Counselling Centre for Immigrants of the Diocesan Caritas of Rome, the widest and most structured observatory of immigration in the voluntary sector in Italy (more than 185,000 files on foreign nationals registered from 1981 representing 146 countries).

From 1989, guided by the university professor of International Law Maria Rita Saulle, she began doing research work in the field of human rights, asylum and migrations, international and EC law at the Naval University of Naples as well as International Law and Organisation at the University of Rome La Sapienza. She directed several professional training courses and lectured within the master course in "International Protection of Human Rights" of the Faculty of Political Science in Rome (from its establishment in 2001 until 2012).

In 1978, she obtained a Humanities prep high school diploma from Liceo Classico.

In 1969, she was among the first foreign exiles to receive the status of political refugee in Italy. She was a political refugee for the next 39 years.

Once reunited, the family lived in Paris for two years and then in 1965, moved to Rome where she attended elementary through high school in the private Catholic Institution of the Nevers Sisters.

At the age of four, on November 2, 1963, after the South Vietnamese coup d'état, in which both her Father Ngô Đình Nhu and Uncle Ngo Dinh Diem were assassinated, she was forced to leave her country and eventually arrived in Rome, Italy, accompanied by her two brothers. At that time her mother Madame Nhu and sister Ngo Dinh Le Thuy were in the middle of a good-will tour in the United States on behalf of the Vietnamese government.

Ngô Đình Lệ Quyên (26 July 1959 – 16 April 2012), was a South Vietnamese-born Italian lawyer who served as Commissioner of Immigration for the city of Rome.

She earned a law degree at the Sapienza University of Rome. In her thesis, she delved into The problem of Việt-Nam in the Geneva conference of 1954.