The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) concluded its annual meeting on Tuesday with the astonishing spectacle of electing North Korea – among the world’s deadliest regimes, a psychopathic nuclear-armed dictatorship that routinely murders dissidents and has deliberately starved a sizable portion of its population – to a seat on the ten-member W.H.O. executive board.

“What this means is that one of the world’s most horrific regimes is now a part of a group that sets and enforces the standards and norms for the global governance of health care. It is an absurd episode for a key U.N. agency that is in much need of self-reflection and reform,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the watchdog group U.N. Watch.

“A seat on the executive board provides North Korea with a vote on the appointment of the W.H.O.’s six regional directors, and potentially on an eventual replacement for Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general now serving his second and final term,” Neuer pointed out.