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Chinese President Xi Jinping meet via video link with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.
Did the UN accomplish anything in Xinjiang?
When human rights are abused around the world, the UN playbook calls for its envoy to visit that country to assess the situation on the ground and then decide whether the allegations merit a full-scale probe. But what if you knew beforehand that you wouldn't see anything you shouldn’t and that your trip would likely benefit the authoritarian government allegedly responsible for atrocities?
That's perhaps how UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet felt Saturday after wrapping up a much-anticipated visit to China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. Beijing has long been accused of subjecting over a million ethnic Uyghurs there to both classic violations, such as warrantless detention, torture, sexual assault, and separation from their families, as well as more Orwellian surveillance, forced labor, and internment in re-education camps.
So why go at all?
Beijing, as expected, choreographed Bachelet's tour — the first time a UN human rights chief has been allowed inside China since 2005 — to whitewash China’s human-rights record in Xinjiang. Her itinerary was kept under wraps, and she traveled without reporters. Even the build-up to the visit was marred by compromise: Bachelet’s office delayed without explanation a major Xinjiang report it was due to release last year, despite announcing it would be "deeply disturbing."
What’s more, Bachelet only spent two days out of six on the ground in Xinjiang. There she met top officials, visited a prison, and toured an “experimental” school. Most controversially, and in language echoing China’s, she said she checked out a former Vocational Education and Training Center, part of a contentious program in which China has been accused of using forced labor and indoctrination.
Bachelet said that while she couldn’t fully assess the notorious program, Beijing had reassured her that it had been shut down (previously, China had denied the existence of the program altogether).
What Bachelet saw in China and how much access she got in Xinjiang has been a major source of controversy. She had called for unfettered access, but her tour was restricted to a “closed loop” within a limited “bubble” due to what Beijing cited as COVID restrictions. Setting the political agenda beforehand, Beijing insisted that the purpose of the visit be “friendly,” not investigative.
“This visit was not an investigation,” Bachelet admitted Saturday. But she stressed the importance of engaging with senior officials and discussing human rights to pave a road to help China fulfill “its obligations under international human rights law” in the future.
The US, of course, strongly criticized the tour. Even before Bachelet left China, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Beijing had managed to “restrict and manipulate” the visit, preventing Bachelet from making an independent assessment of the human rights situation in Xinjiang. He also lamented that she was neither able to garner any information about hundreds of missing Uyghurs nor meet any affected families or anyone who had been through China’s alleged labor transfer program.
Human rights groups, for their part, argue that the trip has done wonders for Beijing but accomplished little for anyone else.
Bachelet “could have strengthened her hand by releasing her office's long-awaited report on Xinjiang. She could have postponed the visit rather than accept significant constraints on it,” says Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, noting her skepticism that the trip will do anything to end human rights violations in China.
The trip was a wasted opportunity for the UN, says Mehmet Tothi, an activist with the Canada-based Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.
“There was no unfettered or meaningful access to any places deemed sensitive by China. So it was open for manipulation, and she became a propaganda tool for China,” he says. “In a sense, this trip simply woke the Western media up to the stark reality that China is a major power at the UN these days.”
The thing is, they already know that in New York and Geneva, where China’s influence has been expanding rapidly over the last decade, according to Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group.
“It is a bit fanciful to imagine that any UN official, even a human rights official, would now go to Beijing to read Xi Jinping the riot act over his internal security policies,” Gowan says. “It is depressing on a moral plane, but politically predictable.”
Finally, Bachelet’s cautionary approach to China runs contrary to her track record. The former Chilean president, considered a fierce human rights defender, has been remarkably outspoken against abuses — from racism in the US and Russian aggression in Ukraine to the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians — but there's been barely a peep on China since she assumed office in 2018. She called out Beijing’s tough policies for Hong Kong but, until recently, never issued an official statement on Xinjiang or even on Tibet.
It’s puzzling that someone who was imprisoned by Pinochet and fled Chile in the 1970s — and knows what it means to struggle under a cruel dictatorship — said nothing about Xinjiang in her recent lecture to Chinese students about human rights in Guangzhou. Before last week’s trip, Bachelet defended herself, saying that she is a “grown woman” who is “able to read between the lines” and that the priority was to engage directly with China on human rights.
Still, getting Beijing to acknowledge its detention program and discuss its rollback is a win for Bachelet, as is having direct discussions with Chinese officials about stuff they’d rather not talk about — especially with a pesky foreigner.
“It’s imperative that the high commissioner be seen to be engaging with the government of China,” Philip Alston, a New York University professor and former UN human rights official, told a webinar last Friday. “The mere fact that she had a direct exchange with President Xi Jinping is an accomplishment.”
Bejing, for its part, bullishly defended its actions, with Xi telling Bachelet that China's handling of human rights “suits its own national conditions” and that following international institutional norms would be “deviating from reality.”
Also, no probe now doesn’t mean no probe later. Richardson remains hopeful that Bachelet will still commit to investigating and prosecuting China’s alleged crimes: “A failure to do so would reflect Beijing's ability to render international human rights institutions utterly toothless.”
But nobody’s holding their breath for a full-blown investigation. Many fear that Bachelet — a contender for the top UN job — has put the world body in a tight spot by agreeing to visit Xinjiang on Beijing’s terms. This risks damaging the standing of her office and further hurting the reputation of the UN, which has been marred by decades of ineffective diplomacy to fix the world’s problems.
While Bachelet’s tour was likely doomed before it began, engaging China and securing marginal assurances from Beijing is a start to address the highly sensitive issue of Xinjiang. And diplomacy is a task that the UN is a lot more suited to execute than investigation.
But the UN can only knock on Beijing’s door. It’s the larger community of powerful international players, such as the G7, who must organize and force a rethink in Beijing.
This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Subscribe for your free daily Signal today.
Are we really building back better after COVID? Experts, policymakers weigh in
Eighteen months later, some countries are already recovering from COVID, while others are still in the thick of it. What's the current state of play on vaccines, what's holding up distribution, will the world emerge stronger or weaker, what should the private sector do, and has Biden delivered on US leadership expectations?
Top leaders from the United Nations, the WHO, the World Bank, and Microsoft weighed in during a Global Stage virtual conversation hosted by GZERO Media in partnership with Microsoft during the 76th UN General Assembly, moderated by The New Yorker's Susan Glasser."Science needs to succeed over politics" — WHO's Dr. Mike Ryan | GLOBAL STAGE | GZERO Mediayoutu.be
For Dr. Mike Ryan, head of emergencies at the World Health Organization, one big obstacle is vaccine hesitancy. And the worst part about it is, in his view, powerful people who weaponize misinformation to serve their own political or economic needs. We need to have a healthy debate about vaccines and their safety, he says, but ultimately "science needs to succeed over politics."
World Bank Chief: Developing Countries Need to Know When Vaccines Coming | GLOBAL STAGE | GZEROyoutu.be
For his part, World Bank President David Malpass says that wealthy countries and more recently India's Serum Institute are producing so many vaccines that there will likely be enough stocks to inoculate the entire world by the end of the year. However, to accomplish that, he warns, the nations that need jabs must know when they'll get them so they can prepare the groundwork to get the shots in people's arms.
Michelle Bachelet: Building back better is not going back to 2019 | GLOBAL STAGE | GZERO Mediayoutu.be
Even if we are able to vaccinate the world in time, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, says that building back better after COVID shouldn't mean returning to the same world we had before the pandemic. What we had back then, she explains, were political, social, and economic systems that didn't respond to people's needs — now we can either break through them, or break down to become an (even more) unequal world.
Why Public & Private Sectors Should Work Together| GLOBAL STAGE | GZERO Mediayoutu.be
Building back better is also about the private sector. The question is not if but rather how corporations will get involved. Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, believes the private sector has a big role to play in helping to roll out COVID vaccines. But the most important thing it can do, he says, is collaborate effectively with the public sector — with a clear understanding of each side's role "so we each do what we're equipped to do and what we do best."
Biden's International Leadership "All Focused at Home" | GLOBAL STAGE | GZERO Mediayoutu.be
Many countries are disappointed about a multilateralist like Joe Biden not delivering on US vaccine exports that the rest of the world desperately needs. But it doesn't surprise Ian Bremmer, who says Biden upset his allies the same way by withdrawing so abruptly from Afghanistan or leaving the French out of the AUKUS loop. For Bremmer, Biden, initially viewed as way more competent and trustworthy than Donald Trump, is now one of the least trusted US presidents in recent history — apart from Trump himself — because whatever he says, his international leadership is "all focused at home."
Is the world really building back better? Watch our live discussion today at 11am ET
"Pandemic" was the most used word of 2020. "Delta" looks set to inherit this year's title.
Vaccination rates are ticking up slowly. Governments aren't talking to each other enough. Parts of the world are back to normal, while others are still locked down.
Have we actually made any progress since the COVID-19 outbreak?
Unfinished Business: Is the World Really Building Back Better?
Wednesday, September 22nd, 11am ET/ 8am PT
Watch the event here.
Our speakers:
- Susan Glasser, staff writer and Washington columnist, The New Yorker (moderator)
- Ian Bremmer, President and Founder, Eurasia Group & GZERO Media
- Brad Smith, President and Vice Chair, Microsoft
- Michelle Bachelet, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
- Dr. Michael Ryan, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme
- David Malpass, President, World Bank Group
Special appearance byAntónio Guterres, UN Secretary-General.
Visit gzeromedia.com/globalstage to watch on the day of the event.
Women in power: Chile’s Michelle Bachelet
Whose job is it to keep an eye on the governments that kill, torture, and displace people? The officials who turn back asylum-seekers, abuse migrants, jail journalists, or smash the skulls of peaceful protesters?
That's more or less a day at the office for Michelle Bachelet. As the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights since 2018, the former two-time leftwing president of Chile is perhaps the most visible and influential voice on human rights in the world today.
Calling out the the worst. As High Commissioner, her job is to promote and monitor governments' protection of universal human rights and freedoms, as laid out in UN declarations and international law. Unjust detention, torture, repression of journalists, and discrimination are just a few of the targets of her work.
Her office has issued searing reports on, among other things, horrific abuses in the Philippines under tough-guy President Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs" campaign; the surge in killings by Brazilian police under Brazil's gun-loving; far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, and the erosion of human rights under the current government of Sri Lanka, whose leaders themselves are implicated in crimes committed during the civil war that ended there in 2009.
One of Bachelet's most influential reports to date was issued in 2019, on the human rights and rule of law crisis in Venezuela under the regime of strongman President Nicolas Maduro. It was a tricky undertaking — Maduro himself had invited the investigation, perhaps believing that Bachelet's left-wing bonafides would make it possible to turn the report into an exculpatory propaganda coup for his regime. No such luck. The 19-page report detailed a raft of abuses right as the world was keenly watching the (now largely defunct) opposition movement of Juan Guaidó.
She brings a personal perspective to this work. Bachelet was a teenager in Chile when rightwing General Augusto Pinochet took power in a coup in 1973. Bachelet's father, an Air Force General who opposed Pinochet, was arrested and died in prison after being tortured. Two years later, Bachelet and her mother were jailed by Pinochet's henchmen and subjected to psychological abuse themselves.
They fled into exile. But after several years abroad, Bachelet returned to Chile to study medicine and work in the Chilean health ministry where she developed a reputation among Chileans as a compassionate fighter on behalf of those left behind in a country that, despite its economic successes, is also one of the most unequal in the world.
Her election as Chile's president in 2006 was a watershed. Not only was Bachelet the first woman president in Chile's history, she was also the first president from the left since the end of Pinochet's regime, and the first female president in Latin America elected on her own merits (Argentina's Isabel Perón and Cristina Kirchner are welcome to disagree if they like). And the fact that she is an agnostic leftwing mother of three — "all of the sins together" she likes to say — added to the sense of change in a Catholic country where gender role expectations are often archaic.
She did not always succeed during her two, non-contiguous, terms as president. Her plans for expanding education and infrastructure fell short of their goals, partly because of flawed political strategy, and partly because of resistance from an established business and political elite hostile to change. But she also took criticism from some of her own supporters for her decision to take a pragmatic, non-confrontational approach to dealing with the legacy of the dictatorship in a country that is still deeply divided over the past.
Does her current work have an effect? Critics say that the High Commissioner's office is a toothless body, good at pointing out problems but powerless to solve them. Most countries don't take kindly to having their abuses exposed. (Bolsonaro even reacted with a swipe at Bachelet's dead father.) And any immediate successes, like Venezuela quietly releasing several political prisoners on the eve of her report's publication, are both small and rare.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council, one of the main audiences for her reports, is riven by geopolitical rivalries among the permanent members (China, Russia, the US, UK, and France), which often deadlock the ability to address human rights abuses.
But at a time when democracy and rule of law are suffering globally — both because of authoritarian impulses in democracies and more assertive strongmen in autocracies — it is important to simply say and prove: these people's rights are being abused, these people's freedoms are being curtailed, these things are happening right now.
Michelle Bachelet's power is, then, to act as the world's most powerful voice for the voiceless. And in 2021, there are a great many people still waiting to be heard.
This article is part of GZERO Media's Women in Power Series, profiling female leaders around the world who hold positions of decisive power and influence in global politics.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated that Eva Perón was president of Argentina, instead of Isabel. We regret the error.
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Michelle Bachelet discusses human rights with Microsoft President Brad Smith
Watch this interview from our UN General Assembly partner, Microsoft:
How do we build a more sustainable, inclusive, and fairer future as we recover from COVID-19? At this year's #UN75, Microsoft President Brad Smith chatted with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.
Panel: Why access to broadband & digital skills is critical
On October 7th, GZERO Media — in partnership with Microsoft and Eurasia Group — presented a live panel discussion, "Digital Inclusion: Connectivity and Skills for the Next Billion Jobs," about the acceleration of digitalization, the changing workforce, and the need for digital access for all.
The conversation was moderated by Sherrell Dorsey, founder and CEO of The Plug, and our panel included:
- Kate Behncken, Vice President, Microsoft Philanthropies
- Lisa Lewin, CEO of General Assembly
- Parag Mehta, Executive Director and Sr Vice President, Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth
- Dominique Hyde, Director External Relations, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
- Rohitesh Dhawan, Managing Director, Energy, Climate & Resources, Eurasia Group
Also featured: special appearances by Michelle Bachelet, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and former president of Chile, and Doreen Bogdan-Martinof the International Telecommunications Union.
A key theme that emerged during discussion was whether internet connectivity should be a human right. For Dhawan, digital inclusion is critical to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, as we have seen during the pandemic how connectivity plays out in real life for all of us. It's also affecting anxiety about long-term student outcomes, said Behncken, who underscored the importance of giving schools proper IT infrastructure so they can train teachers, too.
As for how COVID-19 will affect job skilling, Hyde mentioned how refugees will likely suffer the most because they have the least access to tech. To fix that, Behncken proposed investing in quality education so migrants can become self-sufficient through nurturing their own talent.
Governments have a role to play in all of this. During the Great Depression in the US, Mehta pointed out, the government stepped up to provide jobs. Now, he said, there's an enormous opportunity to accomplish the same goal but indirectly — by empowering small businesses to become job creators through digitalization.
For Lewin, successful reskilling begins with a mindset that recognizes the critical importance of workers and why they are central to the long-term success, competitiveness, and talent value of any organization, public or private.
At this critical moment for connectivity, Bogdan-Martin proposed that the public and private sectors work together to craft a common policy for new digital jobs. But what does that look like? For Dhawan, it's time to invest in public-private connectivity infrastructure investments that will help create far more jobs than spending on roads or bridges.
Finally, however good a policy may be, it won't work until we remove barriers to access on learning and skilling. Lewin said that since no one school or university can do it alone, governments and private firms need to join the challenge so this crisis doesn't have an even more disproportionate impact of the crisis on marginalized communities worldwide.
Watch the other discussions in our four-part livestream panel series about key issues facing the 75th United General Assembly.