Michelle Bachelet

Biography

Michelle Bachelet was born in Santiago in 1951, the daughter of an air force general and an archaeologist. A member of the Socialist Youth, she was detained and tortured under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, then lived in exile in Australia and East Germany before returning to Chile in 1979. She finished her medical degree at the University of Chile and worked as a paediatrician and public health physician.

Under President Ricardo Lagos she became Chile's first woman minister of health (2000-2002) and then its first woman minister of national defence (2002-2004). She won the 2005-06 election to become Chile's first woman president. Her first term brought pension and social protection reforms and new public institutions, but also the troubled launch of the Transantiago transit system and, in its final weeks, the 2010 earthquake.

After leaving office she was the first executive director of UN Women from 2010 to 2013. She won the presidency again in 2013, the first Chilean president to serve two non-consecutive terms, and governed until 2018. From 2018 to 2022 she was United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, whose office reported on conditions in countries including China and Venezuela. Chile nominated her for UN Secretary-General in 2025, but she withdrew in 2026 after the new government dropped its support.