Marcela Ríos

Marcela Alejandra Ríos Tobar (born 14 December 1966) is a Chilean politician and sociologist who served as Chile's Minister of Justice from March 2022 to January 2023.

Family and education She is the daughter of Carlos Gonzalo Ríos Gordillo and Hilda Luisa Tobar Silva. She completed her higher education in sociology at the University of York in Canada, and later earned a master’s degree in social sciences at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Mexico City, graduating in 1994.

She also completed a PhD in political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States.

Public career She has worked in both the public and private sectors, including more than fourteen years at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where she served as a governance officer for UNDP Chile and later as Deputy Resident Representative.

She also served as vice president of the board of the organization Comunidad Mujer.

A feminist and a member of the Convergencia Social (CS) party, on 21 January 2022 she was appointed Minister of Justice and Human Rights by then president-elect Gabriel Boric, becoming the seventh woman to hold the post. She assumed office on 11 March 2022, with the formal start of the administration.

She resigned from the ministry on 7 January 2023, following the filing of a impeachment against her related to the government’s granting of thirteen presidential pardons to individuals involved in acts of violence during the social unrest of October 2019.