Laura Carneiro

Maria Laura Monteza de Souza Carneiro (born 1 May 1963) is a Brazilian lawyer and politician. She has been a councilwoman in the city of Rio de Janeiro, as well as a federal deputy for the state of Rio de Janeiro, in on and off terms since the 1980s. She started her current term as federal deputy in 2023.

Biography Carneiro began her career becoming a parliamentary advisor for Ulysses Guimarães, the then president of the Brazilian Constituent Assembly of 1988. A year after, in 1989, she was elected to her first mandate as city councilwoman of Rio de Janeiro, at 25 years old. Since then, she has been elected councilwoman two other times and has had three other consecutive mandates in the Chamber of Deputies.

She is the daughter of Nelson Carneiro, former senator and ex-president of the National Congress, and his wife, Maria Luísa Monteza de Souza Carneiro, who was of Peruvian origin. He was the author of the first amendment that instituted a parliamentary system in Brazil, after having been jailed by the military dictatorship. He also wrote the country's divorce laws, after 30 years fighting for such provisions. Her uncle was writer and ethnologist on Afro-Brazilian culture Edison Carneiro. Laura graduated with a law degree from Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) in 1985.

Parliamentary career Carneiro was the Municipal Secretary of Social Development before she was 30. She was the co-author of proposals related to Statutes relating to the elderly. She has presented more than a thousand propositions since her first mandate as councilwoman in 1989, mainly relating to combatting violence against women, having also firmly making efforts behind the scenes in Congress to approve the Maria da Penha law.

In 2017 and 2018, she was the vice-president of the Commission for the Defense of Women's Rights, vice-president of the Joint Budget Commission, and was the vice-leader of the MDB in the Chamber of Deputies, but was removed from her position for having voted in favor of an investigation into corruption allegations against then-president Michel Temer.

Carneiro is the lone politician in Brazil to have had 6 laws sanctioned in less than two years. This includes Law 13.413/17, creating comprehensive legislation to protect the rights of children and adolescent victims and witnesses of violence. She would eventually become a member of more than 10 special commissions, highlighting to put forth resources for the 2016 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro that year, as well as her coordinating the attempt to resolve the fiscal crisis hitting the state of Rio de Janeiro. She also was a substitute member for the 8 January CPMI.

In 2023, she was recognized by the Order of Attorneys of Brazil for her work in advocating for the rights of women in Brazil.

Electoral history