Michelle Bachelet will leave her post at the United Nations

Within the United Nations, there is an even more exposed and frustrating position than that of Secretary-General, currently held by the Portuguese diplomat Antonio Guterres. That of High Commissioner for Human Rights: no holder of the post has ever returned for a second term since the creation of this function in 1993. And the only one to have “extended” her term, the South African Navi Pillay, did so in September 2012 for only two years, at the express request of the UN General Assembly. The difficulty of this position is due to an equation that even the most prestigious personalities cannot solve. Find a middle way between the hammer of Western democratic demands, less and less convincing on the international scene, and the anvil of authoritarian regimes.

Read : Michelle Bachelet, the new voice of human rights in the world

Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who herself suffered the prison regime and the tortures of the Pinochet regime in her own country during the 1970s, was rather quickly presented as the ideal choice to (finally) challenge the dictators. It was reckoning without the heaviness inherent in the UN system, of which the very people it is supposed to scold belong. In short: how to denounce the systematic human rights abuses perpetrated by China, when Beijing has a permanent seat on the Security Council, a right of veto and is increasingly infiltrating the major UN agencies to preempt any criticism of it?

To clear-cut positions, Michelle Bachelet preferred “dialogue”. It did not investigate – the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) does not have the mandate stricto sensu – but “exchanged” with draconian regimes. To passivity? This is what the main NGOs accuse him of, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, in particular the day after a recent observation trip to China, the first of a High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations since 2005. A visit that will above all have enabled Xi Jinping’s power to save face without great difficulty, since Michelle Bachelet saw nothing, not even in Xinjiang, about which the international community is worried about the possible genocide committed against the Uighurs by Beijing. Carefully choreographed, out of sight, the movements of the UN delegation accentuated the unease around the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. To the point that some have wondered in recent weeks how Michelle Bachelet, whose mandate ends at the end of August, would justify the possible desire to remain in office.

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