alongside other "Long-Haired Army" leaders. Nguyễn Thị Bình was born in 1927 in An Tịch village,
Châu Thành district,
Sa Đéc Province (now ,
Đồng Tháp province) and is a granddaughter of the Nationalist leader
Phan Chu Trinh. She studied
French at
Lycée Sisowath in
Cambodia and worked as a teacher during the
French colonisation of Vietnam. She joined Vietnam's
Communist Party in 1948. From 1945 to 1951, she took part in various intellectual movements against the French colonists. Subsequently, she was arrested and jailed between 1951 and 1953 in
Chí Hòa Prison (Saigon) by the French colonial authority in
Vietnam. . During the
Vietnam War, she became a member of the Vietcong's
Central Committee and a vice-chairperson of the South Vietnamese Women's Liberation Association. In 1969 she was appointed
foreign minister of the
Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam. A fluent French speaker, Bình played a major role in the
Paris Peace Accords, an agreement that was supposed to end the war and restore peace in Vietnam, which entered into force on 17 January 1973. She was expected to be replaced by a male Vietcong representative after preliminary talks, but quickly became one of the group's most visible international public figures. During this time, she was famous for representing Vietnamese women with her elegant and gracious style, and was referred to by the media as "Madame Bình". She was the only woman who signed the Paris Peace Accords. in a diplomatic document co-signed by
Nguyễn Duy Trinh, her counterpart from the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) After the Vietnam War, she was appointed
Minister of Education of the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam including a high-profile one on the state newspaper
Nhân Dân in which she voiced concerns that the current
personnel policy of the
Communist Party of Vietnam have allowed some "incompetent and opportunistic" individuals to enter the party's apparatus. She also criticized the Party's focus on increasing membership at the expense of "quality." From March 2009 to 2014, she served as a member of the support committee of
Russell Tribunal on
Palestine. == Legacy ==