As the UN Human Rights Council elections draw close, we have to ask, is it still fit for purpose?

The world has never had greater need of a robust human rights community. Despite this, whether in Syria, North Korea or countless other instances, it is clear that the international community is failing to live up to its high ideals. Nothing exemplifies this failure more than the current state of the UN’s principal human rights body, the Human Rights Council (HRC).

At the time of its creation in 2006, many had high hopes that the Human Rights Council could be a stepping stone to a more robust application of human rights standards. Yet, sadly, as the Council enters its second decade, it remains beset with many problems. Allegations of selectivity and politicisation continue to undermine its credibility. On many of the most pressing, human rights issues of the day, the Council has failed to take necessary steps or worse still, has not responded at all.

Think, for example, of the Philippines, where the Duterte government has launched a violent campaign of extrajudicial killings and killed over 7000. The Council has done nothing for to stand up for these people or their rights. The story is much the same for the people of Venezuela, whose government remains without official censure from the Council, even as they preside over mass-hunger and increasingly violent political repression.

This is of no surprise considering that the actions of the Council are dictated by its membership, which currently includes both the Philippines and Venezuela.

They are not the only members with dubious human rights records. Egypt’s continued authoritarian drift did not prevent it from being re-elected to the Council in 2016. Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive states on the planet, has managed to retain its seat for all but one of the Council’s 11 years of existence. Membership of the council is supposed to be a hard-earned privilege, with states earning their places by defending their own human rights records and pledging to do even more. Yet the sad reality is that states often gain seats automatically as a result of backroom deals to avoid elections.

These elections do have the potential to implement change and condemn human rights violations, as was clearly demonstrated when Russia unexpectedly lost its seat to Croatia in 2016. When competitive elections happen, membership standards rise.

However, things are not looking so good for this year’s elections. Just last month France became the latest country to decide that it would not run for a seat on the Council, meaning that this year, four out of the five regional blocs represented will not face any competition. Within those four groupings, there will be no scrutiny and the elections themselves will do nothing to raise membership standards. In other words, the elections will fail, yet again, to serve their intended purpose.

As organisations like Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Five Rights have made clear, the membership represents one of the most serious challenges to better human rights policy.

The international community is well aware of the problem the Council faces. At the most recent session in June, a group of 48 states said as much. In a powerful joint statement, a diverse coalition of states reaffirmed their commitment to making membership of the Council a privilege, not a right.

Although it was encouraging to hear a call to action from some of the world’s most powerful states, this by itself it is not enough. Competitive elections and the real scrutiny that comes with them remain the exception, not the norm. It would be naïve to take these countries at their word. They too have been guilty of hypocrisy in the recent past; they too require pressure to consistently respect human rights.

The task then, for those who want to see a stronger UN system, is to identify a way of providing that pressure and scrutiny. In part, this must involve the efforts of ordinary people. It is striking how little scope there is for ordinary people to get involved in the world’s principal human rights forum.

Though the HRC has gone some way to make more of its workings more public, it remains states that speak on behalf of their people. In legislatures and decision-making bodies around the world, the Internet has provided the means for narrowing the gap between concerned citizens and the decision makers who claim to speak for them. As people like Tom Fletcher have been arguing, there is no reason international affairs shouldn’t reflect this trend too.

Imagine how different decisions taken by the Human Rights Council might look if those voting felt the eyes of the world on their backs. We know that the challenge exists. So too do the means of addressing it.

The task now is for an imaginative campaign to fill this gap and rise to the challenge of proving that, though distant, ordinary people can reclaim their rights at the UN.

Sir Graham Watson is the former leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Group in the European Parliament and Chairman of the Committee on Citizens’ Freedom and Rights