In 2009, the Obama administration reversed standing U.S. foreign policy by joining and funding with taxpayer dollars the U.N. Human Rights Council ― a multilateral body tasked with promoting and defending human rights and upholding the tenets enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice argued that the administration believes that “working from within, [it] can make the council a more effective forum to promote and protect human rights.” However, since 2009, the council has been bad, if not worse, than it has ever been. Only this time around, it has been given the appearance of legitimacy, thanks to the administration’s continued presence on and funding for that body.

In recent years, the council has become so disconnected from its mandate that it doesn’t even feign impartiality or purport to promote universal human rights. In fact, the opposite is true: The council has become the tool for the world’s dictators to shield themselves from scrutiny and obscure their heinous actions, perverting human rights to whitewash gross violations and effectively ensuring that the body cannot do what it was designed to do.

More than half of the current members on the council are ranked just partly free or not free by Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World report, including some of the world’s worst human rights violators such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Venezuela and Cuba. All of these nations were highlighted by the State Department’s most recent Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for placing grotesque restrictions on freedom and rights, and for abusive governance practices.

Yet, earlier this year, Saudi Arabia was announced as the chariman of an important and influential panel on the council.

The structure and composition of the U.N. Human Rights Council have made it subject to gross political manipulation while human rights protections around the world continue to regress, and all of this continues as the Obama administration has failed to win any substantive reforms.

Mr. Obama must demand fundamental reforms of the body, or he must lead an effort to have it dissolved and replaced with a credible alternative. There is precedent for this already: The U.N. Commission on Human Rights, was disbanded in 2006 after being found to be morally bankrupt, reprehensible and completely lacking in credibility. We’re once again at that crossroads.