Doubters need only recall the unwillingness of Secretary General after Secretary General, from U Thant to Kofi Annan, to meet with – or, in some cases, even to permit on the UN’s premises – victims of human rights violations who had the misfortune of being born in powerful countries. For all the UN’s intellectual commitment to the furtherance of human rights, it knows better than to incite the displeasure of the Chinese or the Russians by receiving activists from Tibet or Chechnya.