[1] Born in Ougrée to Gaston Onkelinx [fr] and Germaine Ali Bakir, of Kabyle origin, she graduated in law at the University of Liège, after which she worked as a lawyer for ten years.

[2] Her father, Gaston Onkelinx, originally a Dutch-speaking migrant from Flemish Limburg to francophone Wallonia, has long been mayor of Seraing (near Liège) and member of the House of Representatives (1974–1987).

Her grandfather, Maurice Onkelinx, was alderman and mayor of Jeuk in Limburg and lost his civil rights for some years after the Second World War.

Both Laurette Onkelinx and Minister of the Interior Patrick Dewael came under fire for this incident; the Christian Democratic and Flemish party (CD&V) and Vlaams Belang demanded the resignation of both of them on 6 March 2006.

In July 2006, Onkelinx came under heavy political fire again when one of Belgian's most notorious criminals, Murat Kaplan, did not return from a weekend-leave, which she had signed off.

[7] First elected to the Belgian House of Representatives in 1988, she held several ministerial posts without any interruption from 1992 until 2014: Media related to Laurette Onkelinx at Wikimedia Commons