International politics on occasion poses difficult choices between the better and the good.
The proposals to change the United Nations' human rights regime are an excellent example. They have been negotiated to a consensual compromise over the past five months in New York in a package which would replace the existing deeply-flawed UN Commission on Human Rights with a new and improved structure which still has considerable drawbacks. The question governments must decide on now is whether it is better to accept incremental progress than risk having little or no change if the issue is renegotiated or rejected.
The United States has rejected the compromise as a step too far towards human rights violators. The US attitude has been driven by a running aggravation over the fact that UN custom and practice has ensured that serial human rights violators such as Libya, Zimbabwe or Sudan have as good a chance of serving as those who adhere to such rights. They say the new structure does not depart sufficiently from those shortcomings. Most other states favour the compromise as an acceptable arrangement which makes discernible improvements in the application and review of human rights. Significantly, the European Union has added its collective voice in favour, a decision strongly supported by Ireland. The stage is now set for an important decision in coming days, before the outgoing commission has its annual meeting in Geneva.
The compromise formula would see a new 47-member UN Human Rights Council elected by secret ballot for at most two successive three-year terms, needing a simple majority of at least 96 of the UN's 191 member-states in the General Assembly. Its members could be suspended by a two-thirds vote, would be pledged to uphold human rights standards and be subject to a regular review of their adherence to them.
The UN human rights regime has a distinguished history, having been chaired originally by Eleanor Roosevelt when the Universal Declaration on Human Rights was agreed after the second World War. This remains the world's foundational text on the subject. And it has become even more important since the end of the Cold War brought a more genuine universality to bear on human rights.
Securing a new and more effective regime was a central objective of the UN reform programme put forward by Secretary General Kofi Annan last year. His overall proposals have had limited success, but he is convinced that this particular compromise should be supported. While it cannot rule out the cynical bloc voting and political manoeuvring which has given the commission such a bad name, there is much more transparency and accountability. The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, wants to see a smaller, more streamlined and permanent structure. But the US has lost authority on human rights matters in the aftermath of 9/11 and by opposing this plan risks setting the subject back even more.