A United Nations insider, Volker Turk, is being tapped by Secretary-General Guterres to lead the Geneva-based human rights apparatus — an institution that even more than other UN bodies represents the deep chasm between grand aspirations and grim realities. 

Mr. Turk, an Austrian, will replace Michelle Bachelet, who at times was criticized for seeming to promote human rights violators. Even if Mr. Turk truly espouses the universal human rights ideal set by Eleanor Rossevelt, he will have a tough time applying it. 

In his last role, Mr. Turk was “undersecretary general for policy in the executive office of the secretary-general,” meaning he was sitting near the ear of Mr. Guterres, who presides over the entire system from the 38th floor of the UN’s Turtle Bay headquarters.

As Mr. Guterres notes in his appointment, Mr. Turk wrote papers with titles like “Our Common Agenda,” which “sets out a vision to tackle the world’s interconnected challenges on foundations of trust, solidarity and human rights.”

Earlier Mr. Turk was at Geneva, with the refugee agency that was headed by Mr. Guterres, following stints at Malaysia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Congo, and Kuwait. In other words, rather than a new guy who would shake up a musty system, Mr. Turk is the consummate insider. Then again, insiders who want to do good have an advantage, as they know where all the skeletons are buried. That was the rationale when the late Kofi Annan was promoted to head the United Nations after long climbing up its ranks. 

Annan knew, for one, that the Commission on Human Rights at Geneva was widely seen as rotten to the core. Its membership was dominated by rights violators, for one, and it had concentrated too often on condemning Israel. Its credibility was shot. 

As UN scandals got some press airing — specifically those relating to “oil for food,” a corrupt program created to help Iraqis — Annan decided to direct attention to his ambitious attempt to reform the Geneva human rights body. In 2006, then, the Human Rights  Council was created alongside the office of high commissioner that Mr. Turk is now taking up. 

Like everything else at the UN, Mr. Annan’s initiative was a necessary and positive step; like most everything, too, it ended in disaster. The shining new human rights council turned into even more of a haven for rights violators than its predecessor had been, and the singular attacks against Israel only increased. 

Ms. Bachelet, a socialist former Chilean president who presided over that Geneva cesspool since 2018, quickly was seen as adopting its depravities. This year she traveled to Xinjiang, where she failed to detect any sign of concentration camps. She followed that with a press conference alongside President Xi, during which she praised Communist China’s commitment to human rights. 

In her very last moments in office, Ms. Bachelet finally issued a scathing report on the plight of the Uighurs. It detailed Red China’s atrocities against several minorities, but sidestepped the term genocide that is used by America, Britain, and others. Beijing, which increasingly throws its weight around at the UN, was livid. 

The report thus became a “ticking bomb” that Ms. Bachelet left for Mr. Turk to deal with, a UN watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Orde Kittrie, told the Sun. The report “both angered Beijing and fell short of labeling China’s genocide for what it is,” he said. Now, “Mr. Turk will be left to manage the blowback,” and to “chart a new, more forthright and consistent path forward on China’s abuses.” 

Mr. Turk will hopefully be “far less hesitant to regularly call out China for its human rights abuses,” Mr. Kittrie said. More broadly, he added, “Human rights supporters everywhere should hope that the new high commissioner would seize the opportunity and refocus his office.” 

America has had its ups and downs with the Geneva apparatus. When the Human Rights Council was founded in 2006, President Bush refused to join it, wisely foreseeing what it would become. President Obama reversed the decision and joined the body, after which President Trump walked out and then President Biden rejoined. Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden vowed — and has failed — to reform the system. 

America forks out $29 million of the rights council’s $134 million regular annual budget. That is 22 percent of the total — by far more than any other country, including Communisr China, which funds just more than 15 percent of the council’s budget. 

Despite all the well-wishing, it’s hard to see how Mr. Turk would succeed where America failed. Narrowing the gap between Eleanor Roosevelt’s vision and the realities at Geneva may well prove to be mission impossible.