Michelle Bachelet's personal fight for human rights

Inside Geneva

On Inside Geneva this week: part six of our series marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Imogen Foulkes talks to Michelle Bachelet, who served as UN Human Rights Commissioner from 2018 to 2022. She was a young woman during Chile’s military dictatorship, and experienced human rights violations first hand.

“You needed to be as strong as possible, and not to fail and not to... how could I say confess things that could harm other people.”

When democracy returned to Chile, Bachelet served as her country’s president twice. Valuable experience, she believes, for later, persuading world leaders to respect human rights.

“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 came under huge pressure for a much delayed but hard-hitting report on human rights in China.

“I used to tell them look if you ask me not to publish this then tomorrow, another big country will call me and say don’t 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.”

Now, she feels the world has failed civilians in Gaza.

“You have people there that need a humanitarian corridor, so they can get food, medicines, water, electricity and I feel that the international community has been slow to respond. Slow and weak.”

And what about the Universal Declaration at 75?

“The Universal Declaration is still valid. Because it gives sort of a minimal, I would say, standard of how we can live together.”

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