TO MANY, the UN’s Human Rights Council is a den of hypocrites, where brutal regimes wax self-righteous about Israel in particular and the West in general. And indeed, it has wasted a vast share of its time castigating Israel while failing to bring vile malefactors elsewhere to book. At its next session, starting this month, Donald Trump’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley (pictured), is expected to say whether America will stay or, as it did under George W. Bush in 2006, leave in a huff. She is likely, at the least, to put the council “on notice”.

Yet virtually everyone who cares about human rights hopes America will stay. Though selectively and patchily, the council has promoted justice around the world. When America has backed it or argued from within, it has been more effective. Even Israel’s government says America, for the time being at least, should stay in.

In 2006 the council replaced the UN Commission on Human Rights, which had been irredeemably discredited, not least by being chaired just a few years earlier by Libya, then ruled by the despotic Muammar Qaddafi. The new body was smaller, and its 47 members would be elected (in five geographical clusters) by the UN General Assembly, which could, by a two-thirds majority, chuck out any member judged to have committed “gross and systematic violations of human rights”.

This has happened too rarely. Of the current members, some have dire records: Burundi, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, for instance. Regional blocs have often been biased, shielding their members from criticism. “It is an assembly of states, not a beauty parade of saints,” says a human-rights campaigner.

Israel still receives outsized criticism, not least because a standing agenda topic (“Item 7”) on the Palestinian Territories must be raised at every session. According to UN Watch, a Geneva-based pro-Israeli monitor, in the council’s first decade 68 resolutions were passed against Israel and 67 against everywhere else. By contrast, says UN Watch, Syria has been condemned 20 times, North Korea nine times, Iran six and Sudan three. (The UN classifies its resolutions slightly differently, and says UN Watch exaggerates.) Though the new body provides for “special sessions” to discuss gross human-rights violations, governments committing atrocities in places such as Chechnya and Zimbabwe have never been condemned outright.

The most effective diplomats in Geneva are probably Cuba’s, says Andrew Clapham of Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. “They are skilful, well-trained and have a lot at stake”—not least in shielding fellow anti-democratic regimes from condemnation. A so-called Like-Minded Group within the council, whose sturdiest component is African, tends on principle to oppose “country-specific resolutions”, meaning direct criticisms of abusive governments.

Moreover, the council has continued to make partisan appointments. From 2008 to 2014 Richard Falk, an outspoken anti-Zionist, was the special rapporteur for Palestine. Jean Ziegler, a Swiss revolutionary apologist for Fidel Castro and Qaddafi, is an adviser to the council. In 2015 Saudi Arabia was chosen to represent its regional bloc on a consultative committee that helps choose the special rapporteurs and experts for particular countries or themes.

Let’s go bloc-busting

Yet the council is a lot better than the commission was, and is still improving. The most important difference is the system of “universal periodic reviews” that all members of the UN are subjected to, at a rate of about 40 a year. The number of special rapporteurs, most of them truly independent, has risen, too. Since 2011 there have been investigations into human-rights abuses in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Libya and North Korea, as well as Gaza. The council has steadfastly monitored the horrors in Syria and played a helpful role in Myanmar, Colombia and (after a poor start) Sri Lanka.

The disproportionate focus on Israel is lessening. From 2010 to 2016 only one special session was held on Israel/Palestine, down from six in the previous four years, says the council’s spokesman. The share of time spent on Item 7 has halved, to 8%.

The quality of members may improve, too, as regional groups are a bit less willing to shield their own. Last year Russia lost its seat, receiving 32 votes fewer than Hungary, and two fewer than Croatia. In the past few years Belarus, Iran, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Syria have failed to be elected or have withdrawn their candidacies. None of the nine worst human-rights offenders, as ranked by Freedom House, a Washington-based NGO, (Syria, Eritrea, North Korea, Uzbekistan, South Sudan, Turkmenistan, Somalia, Sudan and Equatorial Guinea) has ever been elected to the council. In a telling moment in 2014, a forcefully critical resolution on Sri Lanka was passed.

Things started to change in 2010, says Marc Limon, a British former official in the council, who now heads the Universal Rights Group, a Geneva-based think-tank, when a clutch of independent-minded countries, including Mauritius, Mexico and Morocco, began to vote more freely, often for American-backed resolutions. Before then, members of the 57-strong Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) and the African Group (whose members often overlapped and later reconfigured as the Like-Minded Group) “virtually controlled the council”, he says. Anti-Westerners have recently been defeated or forced to compromise on several issues. A resolution to exempt blasphemy from free-speech protections was fended off against the wishes of the Like-Minded. The same group failed to block a resolution to appoint an independent expert to investigate discrimination against gay and transgender people.

American diplomacy under Barack Obama was a big reason for the shift. “It’s a fact that the US takes the lead in protecting people around the world,” says Navi Pillay, a former high commissioner for human rights, citing America’s key role in persuading the council to take on Sri Lanka in 2014. As for Israel, says a Western ambassador, “It would have been much worse for it if the US hadn’t been there.”

Ms Haley is likely to make two demands. The first, to drop the permanent anti-Israel item from the agenda, will probably be refused. The second, that members should be elected competitively rather than by regional blocs voting for “clean slates” (pre-cooked lists), is more feasible but still unlikely. What is more certain is that if America walks out, the cause of human rights would be weakened—along with American influence.