United Nations: UN Women’s chief Michelle Bachelet has decided to step down, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement issued at United Nations.
“Michelle Bachelet has informed me of her intention to step down as executive director of UN Women,” Ban said in the statement issued by his spokesman.
Bachelet, a former Chilean president, is the first UN under-secretary-general and executive director of UN Women, which was established on July 2, 2010 by the UN General Assembly.
Bachelet, who was born in Santiago Sep 29, 1951, is a pediatrician and public health expert.
UN Women brought together a variety of UN agencies and departments and consolidated them under one roof. The agency bills itself as the UN “entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women”.
“I would like to express my tremendous gratitude for her outstanding service,” Ban said of Bachelet, who took up her pioneering position at UN headquarters in 2010. “Michelle Bachelet was the right person in the right job at the right time.”
Bachelet is widely expected by Chileans to be a candidate in the Nov. 17 presidential election. Recent polls have said that 54 percent of voters support her, and the center-left opposition views her as its best chance to defeat conservative President Sebastian Pinera and regain power.
Carlos Larrain, head of the conservative National Renewal Party, said a Bachelet candidacy “will be healthy for the system” by giving voters a choice between the social welfare policies of her previous term and those of Pinera’s government.
Chile is respected for its fast-growing economy and transparent institutions, but it also has the worst inequality rate among the 34 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and widespread protests of inequalities have harried the administrations of both Bachelet and her successor, Pinera.
Bachelet recently topped a poll in Chile of possible presidential candidates in the South American country.
Michelle Bachelet stepping down as UN Women’s chief
March 16, 2013 by
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