Michelle Bachelet’s fight for human rights

It’s time for another chat with a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. As regular readers and listeners will know, over the course of this year, I’ve been interviewing all those who have held the job, as part of Inside Geneva’s coverage of the 75^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This time, our guest is Michelle Bachelet, who held the post here in Geneva until August last year. Her time in office was full of challenges, from the Covid 19 pandemic to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She also faced huge pressure to publish a long-awaited report on China’s treatment of its Uyghur population.

I’ve had the chance to personally meet and interview all the UN human rights commissioners except Jose Ayala Lasso, who was in office before my time in Geneva, and Michelle Bachelet. The pandemic lockdowns meant face-to-face interviews were very often not possible. The UN held virtual press briefings, and so journalists got to know Bachelet via our computer screens.

Michelle Bachelet gives a speech at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on May 12, 2022. © Keystone / Martial Trezzini

So when I finally got the chance to interview her (again virtually, she was in her office in Santiago) I was a little nervous – I didn’t feel I knew her as I did Navi Pillay, Louise Arbour, or Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein.

What I found was a relaxed, warm, very knowledgeable woman, with plenty of humour, combined with a steely realism of what the UN human rights chief’s job entails.

Growing up under dictatorship

Bachelet, perhaps more than anyone else who has done the job, knows first hand what human rights violations are. As a young woman she witnessed Augusto Pinochet’s military coup in Chile and the violent repression that followed.

Her own father was arrested, tortured, and, as a result of the torture, died of a heart attack in prison. Later, she and her mother were arrested and taken to Santiago’s notorious Villa Grimaldi, an interrogation centre run by Chile’s secret police, the DINA.

There, the mother and daughter were separated. Neither knew what had happened to the other. Bachelet remembers focussing on trying “to be as strong as possible, not to fail and not to… how could I say, confess things that could harm other people.”

Eventually both were released, the long dictatorship in Chile continued, and Bachelet, undeterred, continued her work as a doctor but also in politics. When democracy finally returned to Chile, she was ready to serve her country, first as a government minister, then, not once but twice, as its president.

When I put it to her what an incredible journey that is, from prison cell to presidential palace, she laughs: “it took a long time”.

Political experience

Some might think it is unusual to go from being head of government to a senior UN job. In fact Bachelet had done a stint at UN Women in between her two terms as Chile’s president, so, when the call came to take up the role of UN Human Rights Commissioner, she was not a complete stranger to the United Nations.

During her time in office, human rights groups criticised her for taking a “one government leader to another” approach to abusive regimes, but Bachelet is convinced her political experience was highly useful at UN human rights.

“Having been president twice before being high commissioner, I could put myself in the shoes of that person who was making those decisions, and tried to think which could be the arguments that would convince them to respect human rights. That it’s not only the right thing to do but also the smart thing,” she told Inside Geneva.

Did it work? Opinions are divided on that, and we may never actually know whether private talks (which in reality all UN human rights commissioners have with heads of governments) actually led to less repression, and more respect for rights.

China pressure

Bachelet is likely to be best remembered for the enormous pressure she came under to publish a UN report on conditions in Xinjiang province in China, where human rights groups said Beijing had interned up to a million Uyghurs in “re-education camps”. Reports suggested the camps involved the separation of children from their parents and the forced sterilisation of women.

That UN report was delayed, and delayed again, while different interested parties (including China itself) wrangled over its contents. Bachelet remembers being urged on an almost daily basis to postpone again or to publish.

‘‘I used to tell them, look if you ask me not to publish this then tomorrow, another big country will call me and say no, publish this. And then another big country will come. So then the only thing I can do is to go back home, because I have to do my job. So there was lots of pressure, lots of criticism,” she explained.

Journalists remember that night last August, when, at five minutes to midnight on her last day in office, Bachelet finally published the report. We were irritated and sleep deprived, but it was a hard-hitting report, suggesting China was committing possible crimes against humanity.

Black lives matter

While China dominated Bachelet’s time in office, there’s another issue I think she should be remembered for: her work on the rights of – and discrimination against – people of African descent.

The killing of George Floyd by United States police officers sparked worldwide outrage. In Geneva, UN human rights provided support, and a platform, for families of those (and there are many) who had been similarly killed.

It was Bachelet who publicly drew the connection between the legacy of slavery and colonialism, and the systemic discrimination of people of African descent. She called for reparations because of “centuries of violence and discrimination”.

Will anything come of that call? “I don’t know”, is her honest answer, but she feels the debate has started.

And what about the Universal Declaration that is now 75? Is it fit for purpose? Bachelet is wary of calls to change it to reflect new awareness of equality and identity. Re-opening the declaration could, she fears, be a “Pandora’s Box”. The declaration already says “all people, all persons, everyone is included there. This is good enough,” she points out.

“The Universal Declaration is still valid. Because it gives a minimal standard, of how we can live together,” she adds.