Socialist former president of Chile and former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet announced on Sunday she would no longer campaign to replace Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the United Nations.
Bachelet’s bid was troubled in part by her poor performance as high commissioner – in which she famously whitewashed China’s genocide of Uyghurs and other Turkic people in East Turkistan – and her own country abandoning support for her bid after a conservative president took office.
The former Chilean president published a video on her social media accounts on Sunday announcing that she would no longer campaign for the leadership of the U.N. She did not offer an explanation for doing so, instead pushing back on the idea that a hardline socialist candidacy in a world in which the global right has seen a string of electoral victories was ill-timed.
“Some may believe that this was not the right time for the kind of candidacy I sought to represent,” she claimed, “at a moment when strong winds are blowing against principles such as multilateralism; against international law, which is being repeatedly violated; against the reality of climate change … and against democracy and human rights, which are under threat.”
The statement did not elaborate on how human rights or international law were “under threat.” Instead, she offered, “I remain convinced that this was precisely the time to raise our voice in defence of these principles, which I have proudly placed at the heart of my candidacy. I do not regret having undertaken this great challenge.”
Bachelet thanked the remaining leftist presidents of Latin America, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, for their support, omitting former Chilean President Gabriel Boric, who supported her during his final months in office. She also did not endorse any other remaining candidates for secretary-general, but asserted “the conviction that the next Secretary-General should be a woman from Latin America: someone truly independent, loyal to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and prepared to uphold them firmly before all States, regardless of their size or power.”
The election of a new secretary-general is a somewhat secretive process involving extensive backdoors campaigning by candidates among the five permanent members of the Security Council: America, Britain, France, China, and Russia. The Security Council chooses among itself a candidate to nominate for the role, to be formally voted on by the General Assembly, whose membership consists of all U.N. member states. By the time a candidate makes it to General Assembly nomination, however, there is often consensus among major states as to who they have agreed to.
This year, Bachelet was originally campaigning against eight other candidates. One other, Argentine diplomat Victoria Gamba, has also withdrawn at press time, leaving seven active candidacies. Remaining in the race are former Senegalese President Macky Sall, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi, former General Assembly President María Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuadorian diplomat Ivonne A-Baki, U.N. bureaucrat Rebeca Grynspan, Guyanese diplomat Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, and Ugandan diplomat Olara Otunnu.
To determine the viability of candidate, the Security Council regularly holds straw polls. The latest straw poll took place this weekend and found only one Security Council state voting to encourage Bachelet to continue in the race, a drop from six in the last round. Grynspan won the poll, followed by Rodrigues Birkett and Espinosa.
Prior to running to lead the U.N., Bachelet’s most prominent position in the organization was as its head of the human rights office from 2018 to 2022. Bachelet stepped down in disgrace in 2022 after a disastrous trip to China, where she had traveled allegedly to investigate the extensive evidence that the Communist Party was committing genocide against the Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other non-Han peoples of occupied East Turkistan. Rather than condemning the country, Bachelet claimed that the Communist Party had “dismantled” the known concentration camps used to enslave and torture its victims and shockingly praised China’s human rights record.
Bachelet visited China in June seeking support for her United Nations bid, meeting with Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Beijing did not promise to support her, instead offering to partake in the elections “in a responsible and constructive manner.”
Outside of China, Bachelet’s campaign was controversial given her track record with dictatorships. The organization UN Watch led a campaign to discourage countries from supporting her, citing her sympathetic attitudes not just towards the Chinese Communist Party but towards dictatorships such as those of Cuba and Venezuela in her hemisphere.
During her tenure, UN Watch chief Hillel Neuer explained, Bachelet “systematically failed to confront egregious human rights abuses by some of the world’s worst regimes, including China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.”
“Moreover, under her tenure, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) applied grossly disproportionate attention to criticizing liberal democracies … while giving a free pass to authoritarian regimes that systematically suppress dissent and lack any meaningful internal accountability,” Neuer added.
