Jose Miguel Insulza was elected Secretary General of the OAS on May 2, 2005 and then re-elected on March 24, 2010.
This acclaimed Chilean politician has an outstanding career as a public servant for the Chilean government. When he took office as Secretary General in his first term, Insulza pledged to "strengthen the Organization’s political relevance and its capacity for action ."
A lawyer by training -Insulza holds a law degree from the University of Chile, has done postgraduate studies at the Latin American School of Social Sciences ( FLACSO) and holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Michigan. Until 1973, he was Professor of Political Theory at the University of Chile, and Professor of Political Science at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Until that same year he also served as Political Advisor to the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Director of the Diplomatic Academy of Chile.
He started his political career during his student years, in this early years he was elected as Vice President of the University of Chile Student Federation ( DATE ), President of the Law Student Center of the University of Chile and President of the former Union of University Federations of Chile ( UFUCH ), currently operating as The Confederation of Chilean Students (CONFECH).
In the early seventies, Insulza actively participated in Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity (UP) government, and after the coup d’état that put Augusto Pinochet in power, he went into exile for 15 years, first in Rome (1974-1980 ) and then in Mexico ( 1981-1988 ).
After that Insulza in early 1988 he was able to return to Chile and joined the Concertación (Coalition of Parties for Democracy), the political movement that stood and won the referendum against the Pinochet regime in October of that same year. He held important senior positions in the government of the Concertación (Coalition of Parties for Democracy).
Under the administration of President Patricio Aylwin, Insulza served as Chilean Ambassador for International Cooperation, Director of Multilateral Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the International Cooperation Agency. In March 1994 , under the administration of President Eduardo Frei, Insulza became Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs and in September of that year was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1999, he served as Minister Secretary-General of the Presidency, and in march of the following year he became President Ricardo Lagos’s Minister of the Interior and Vice President of the Republic. When he left office in May 2005, he had served as a government minister for more than a decade , the longest continuous tenure for a minister in Chilean history.
In July 2015, he was appointed as the new President of "Chile Transparente". Chile Transparente is part of Transparency International, a global movement that gives voice to the victims and witnesses of corruption.
