Tehran 1968 and Reform of the UN Human Rights System

In 1967, several countries in the West briefly contemplated proposing a series of bold reform initiatives at the First World Conference on Human Rights in Tehran, Iran. The primary purposes of the proposals, which included establishing the post of the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights and even replacing the UN Human Rights Commission with a new Human Rights Council, were to strengthen the UN's human rights system. But they were also part of a larger power struggle between the newly decolonized states and the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) countries. Although several of the ideas were never pursued, they are nonetheless telling. They suggest that the WEOG initially saw Tehran as an opportunity to retake control of the UN human rights system. But this was quickly abandoned, as governments in the West accepted the sober reality that any major reform initiatives would ultimately be co-opted against them.