• The Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development for 2024 will be conferred on former Chile President and prominent human rights voice Michelle Bachelet.

• Michelle Bachelet is one of the world’s most prominent voices for human rights, peace, and equality, the international jury for the award chaired by former National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon said.

Indira Gandhi Peace Prize

• The Indira Gandhi Peace Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development was instituted in 1986 to commemorate Indira Gandhi’s outstanding contribution to national and global well-being. 

• It is administered by the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust.

• The Prize is awarded annually to a person or organisation without any distinction of nationality, race or religion.

• The Prize includes a cash award of Rs 25 lakh and a citation.

Who is Michelle Bachelet?

• Michelle Bachelet was the first woman to hold Chile’s presidency and later became the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights.

• Bachelet was twice elected as Chile’s President (2006-2010 and 2014-2018). 

• She was born in Santiago, Chile, on September 29, 1951.

• In 1970 she entered the career in Medicine at the University of Chile. 

• 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 East Germany. In that country, she learned German and continued her medical studies and then enrolled at Humboldt University medical school in Berlin.

• Bachelet returned to Chile in 1979, and continued her studies in medicine at the University of Chile. She graduated as a surgeon in 1982. Then she spent four years specialising in paediatrics and public health.

• Once democracy was restored in 1990, there was immediately a great need for professionals to help restore the country’s public health system, which had been neglected by the dictatorship on a massive scale. She was hired as an epidemiologist at the Metropolitan Health Service in western Santiago, and later moved to CONASIDA, the National AIDS Commission. 

• During this time, she consulted for the Pan-American Health Organisation, the World Health Organisation and the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ). 

• In 1994, she joined the Health Ministry as a consultant on Primary Care and Healthcare Services Management issues.

• In 2000, Bachelet was named Minister of Health in President Ricardo Lagos’ administration.

• On January 7 2002, President Lagos reshuffled his Cabinet and moved Bachelet to head of the defence ministry. She was the first woman both in Chile and in Latin America to hold such a position.

• In a run-off presidential election held on February 15, 2006, Michelle Bachelet won 53.49 per cent of the votes and thus became the first woman to be elected President in the history of the Republic of Chile. She held this office for four years, serving her full term.

• 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.

• On August 8, 2018, she was nominated by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She officially left office as High Commissioner on August 31, 2022.

• In her various roles as the founding director of UN Women, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and as President of Chile, she has spoken strongly for gender equality and the rights of the most vulnerable sections of the population at home and across the world.

• Her personal courage and example in standing for peace and the rights of marginalised people continue to inspire men and women around the world.

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