UNITED NATIONS – The election yesterday of countries with bad human rights records, including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, onto the Human Rights Council brought a torrent of complaints that the United Nations had barely improved upon the discredited Human Rights Commission, which the council replaced.

“It was deeply disappointing to learn that today Cuba was elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council,” Senator Coleman, a Republican of Minnesota, said. “The new Human Rights Council is the perfect example of the U.N.’s failure to reform, as it was established to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission where the worst human rights abusers sat in its membership.

“It is ludicrous to believe that an entity where the world’s serial human rights abusers are included in the membership will actually be able to play a relevant role in protecting and promoting human rights.”

Some of the worst human rights violators, like Zimbabwe and Sudan, did not put their names forward for election by the General Assembly, while Iran and Venezuela failed to be elected members.

America did not run for a seat on the Geneva-based body, arguing the new council did not represent enough of a change from the Human Rights Commission.

The composition of the 47-member council represents a setback for democracies of the Western bloc. The Western European and Others Group, which includes America, Australia, Canada, and Israel, has fewer representatives on the council than on the Human Rights Commission, while the number of representatives from the Asian and African groups, which include some of the worst human rights violators, rose significantly.

It is unclear whether the agenda of the council will be much different from that of the commission. This year the commission passed half a dozen resolutions that it automatically approves every year denouncing Israeli practices in its war on terror. The commission, however, failed to gather a majority vote for even a single resolution on Sudan, where the Bush administration says genocide is taking place.

Membership of the new council is based on rotation. Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Bahrain were among those elected for a single year. Pakistan was elected for two years, while China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Cuba were among those elected for a three-year term.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said he hoped the election of his country would “contribute to the balance of positions of this council and to the balance in [its] discussions.” The loss of freedoms in Russia was denounced last week by Vice President Cheney.

Advocates who have supported the new U.N. body were encouraged by yesterday’s vote. “We’ve already scored a victory by excluding a host of awful governments,” Human Rights Watch director, Kenneth Roth, told The New York Sun.

“The challenge now is, will they vote their convictions?” he said. “Will they show the courage of their convictions and condemn Sudan for the atrocities in Darfur? Will they avoid their fixation on Israel and focus on other governments that are equally or even more deserving of condemnation?”