The first internationally broadcast candidates’ debate in the race to become the next United Nations secretary-general will take place on June 9 in Geneva. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum recently declared that “the ideal person to lead the United Nations” is Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile and former UN high commissioner for human rights.
Yet Bachelet’s record tells a different story. During four years as the UN’s top human rights official, she repeatedly failed to speak out against some of the world’s worst dictatorships while reserving disproportionate attention for democratic states.
To elevate her now to the UN’s highest office would signal that looking away from tyranny carries no cost, and may even be rewarded.
This is not a new concern. In 2022, at the conclusion of Bachelet’s four-year term as the UN’s highest human rights figure, UN Watch published a comprehensive review of her record, titled "Blind Eye to Dictatorships."
After examining every stand-alone country criticism initiated by Bachelet during her tenure, the report documented a persistent pattern of selective outrage. UN Watch recently echoed those concerns in an open letter urging governments to oppose her candidacy for secretary-general.
Our review found that Michelle Bachelet did speak out against certain abuses, such as in Myanmar, Sudan, Belarus, Nicaragua, and on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Yet she repeatedly failed to use her voice against some of the world’s most powerful and repressive regimes, including China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia.
She remained largely silent on political prisoners, dissidents, religious persecution, forced hijab laws, antisemitic violence, and China’s mass detention of Uyghurs until the final hours of her mandate.
At the same time, she devoted more stand-alone condemnations to democratic countries such as Israel and the United States than to many of the world’s worst human rights abusers. The result was a record marked not by consistency, but by a troubling double standard that too often left the victims of dictatorships without a champion.
Despite overwhelming evidence – including satellite imagery, survivor testimony, and leaked Chinese government documents – Bachelet delayed the release of the UN’s Xinjiang report for years, declined to publicly confront Beijing in strong terms, and did not issue a formal UN finding on the mass detention of over a million Uyghurs until the very final minutes of her tenure.
When Russia jailed its most prominent dissidents, Bachelet remained silent. She never issued a statement on Vladimir Kara-Murza, despite his surviving two suspected poisonings and later being imprisoned for opposing the Putin regime. This was despite repeated appeals from UN Watch and other international human rights organizations urging her to demand his release.
As Iranian women were harassed, arrested, and abused for showing their hair, Bachelet remained silent. When many condemned the regime for sending agents to Brooklyn to try and kidnap Iranian women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad, Bachelet was silent.
When novelist Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the wake of the Islamic regime’s fatwa, Bachelet was silent. Nor did she ever call out Tehran’s role in fomenting terrorism and conflict across Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Israel.
If Bachelet was silent on many of the world’s worst dictatorships, this was compensated by a wildly disproportionate focus on condemning America and Israel.
UN Watch had made 27 separate appeals for Bachelet to speak out on human rights abuses in Venezuela, yet in her four-year term, she only called out the Maduro regime seven times. By contrast, she initiated 10 criticisms of the United States.
Likewise, while Bachelet entered the abortion debate by criticizing the US Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, she never spoke out on anti-abortion laws in countries like Egypt, El Salvador, Nicaragua, or Senegal.
Nor did she ever issue a press release on forced abortions and sterilizations in China and North Korea. But going after America is what wins you points in Geneva.
Bachelet's obsession with Israel
Most telling of all was her obsession with condemning Israel. Systematically, Bachelet applied a double standard against the Jewish state, which she condemned more than Venezuela, China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Cuba, Yemen, and the Taliban.
Her policy toward Jews in the Diaspora was no better. During her four-year term, though Bachelet did speak out often on racism, she never initiated a single condemnation of violent antisemitic attacks that took place worldwide.
So while Bachelet had issued three statements criticizing the US government over violence against African Americans, she never issued a single statement on the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history, the 2018 massacre of 11 worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, nor on the 2019 shooting at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California, or the 2022 hostage-taking at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas.
Clearly, the familiar maxim that “Jews are news” is only half true: they are news when they can be condemned, but not when they are under attack.
The question now before member states is whether this is the record they wish to reward.
Supporters of Bachelet point to her experience as a former president and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Experience, however, is not the issue. Judgment is.
If the UN is to regain any of its credibility, the next Secretary-General needs to push back against aggressors, defend political prisoners, challenge powerful dictatorships, and speak for those who have no voice. Bachelet’s record raises serious doubts about whether she is willing to do so when the perpetrators are influential regimes.
Long before she became High Commissioner, Bachelet faced criticism for her accommodating approach toward her kindred spirits leading the regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Her tenure at the UN did not dispel those concerns – it reinforced them.
The United Nations does not need another Secretary-General skilled at navigating political sensitivities. It needs a leader prepared to confront uncomfortable truths, regardless of which government objects. The victims of repression in China, Iran, Cuba, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, and elsewhere deserve more than carefully calibrated silence.
The UN’s credibility is already under unprecedented strain. Elevating Michelle Bachelet would only reinforce the perception that, at the UN, accommodation of dictatorships is a path to advancement rather than a disqualification from leadership.
The world deserves better. So does the United Nations.
The writer is executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights organization.