The UN too often behaves like a machine running on obsolete software That gap between promise and practice is impossible to ignore, as tyrant leaders call the shots in the veto based 'senate' - the Security Council. It might as well be called the Insecurity Council, fo the havoc its failings are wreaking on the world. At an off-the-record round table during this year’s human rights gathering in Oslo, a diverse group of experts, practitioners, and activists debated the UN’s engagement with democracy and came up with a course-correcting proposal: establishing a UN Special Rapporteur on Democracy (UNRoD). Democracy is an idea - of persons affected by decisions having at least a chance of having a say in those decisions. It is not a cure for all ills. But it is a reasonable aspiration of all peoples. Democratic regression afflicts not just the UN, but also newer and long-standing democracies; put plainly, the erosion of democracy corrodes human rights, and the erosion of human rights corrodes all societies.