In 2006 there was an important institutional change in the United Nation’s human rights system for the protection of human rights: the Human Rights Commission, which had been working for about 60 years, was extinguished and a Human Rights Council was created in its place. The Council started to work in June 2006 and had the challenge to build on the Commission’s strengths overcoming the problems it had, mainly related to the excess of bias and double standards (“politization”) in its work. The new body was thought to mean an advance in relation to its predecessor, with novelties such as enhanced political visibility, the greater frequency of the sessions, the provision of procedures for the election and maintenance of its members and above all the introduction of a new mechanism known as “Universal Periodical Review”. This article aims at describing this institutional transition, contextualizing it in the process of the UN reform, and commenting on the main issues that characterized its first year of work.