Michelle Bachelet Jeria, Former President of Chile

Michelle Bachelet

Former President of Chile

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Michelle Bachelet was born in Santiago on September 29. She lived in the United States between 1962 and 1963. Most of his high school studies were at Liceo No. 1 Javiera Carrera in Santiago. In 1970 she entered the career in Medicine at the University of Chile. In addition to assuming positions as a student leader, during the Popular Unity Government she joined the Socialist Youth.

In 1974, as a result of torture during her imprisonment, her father Alberto Bachelet suffered a heart attack that caused his death. On January 10, 1975, she was arrested and imprisoned with her mother Angela Jeria in Villa Grimaldi, the main torture center of the DINA (National Intelligence Directorate, which functioned as a secret police). They were later transferred to Cuatro Alamos, a detention center. They both obtained their freedom at the end of that month and went into exile in Australia and later to the German Democratic Republic. In that country, she learned German and continued her medical studies at the Humboldt Universität in Berlin.

He returned to the country in 1979, resuming his studies at the University of Chile. In 1982 he graduated as a Surgeon and applied to the public system. He obtained a scholarship from the Chilean Medical Association to specialize in pediatrics and public health at the Roberto del Rio Hospital for the next four years. After Chile's return to democracy, she joined the Western Metropolitan Health Service as an epidemiologist and then the National AIDS Commission. Simultaneously, she was a consultant for the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Health Organization, and the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ).

In 1994, she worked as an advisor to the Ministry of Health on Primary Health Care and Health Services management. Later, she participated in a course on Military Strategy at the National Academy of Political and Strategic Studies (ANEPE). In 2000, when President Ricardo Lagos Escobar took office, she was appointed Minister of Health. Two years later she became Minister of National Defense and became the first woman to hold this position in the history of Chile and Latin America.

In the presidential elections of December 11, 2006, she obtained 45.95% and became the first woman elected President in the republican history of Chile. She held this position from 2006 to 2010.

On September 14, 2010, the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, appointed Michelle Bachelet as the first Director of the newly created UN Women agency, an entity called to fight for the rights of women and girls in the world.

In 2013 she returned to Chile and announced her presidential candidacy, which she won and became President of the Republic for the period 2014-2018.

She founded in 2018 Horizonte Ciudadano, intending to put at the service of progressivism her experience and vision to collaborate generating dialogue and citizen initiatives around the challenges facing Chile, from a global and avant-garde look.

On August 8, 2018, she was nominated by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She officially took office on September 5 at the UN, in a ceremony held at the United Nations (UN), alongside the Secretary-General, the seventh person to assume the position of High Commissioner for HR. She officially left office as High Commissioner on August 31, 2022.

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