In response to Ahmadinejad's speech, a parade of delegates, including those of France, Britain and the Czech Republic, got up and walked out. The foreign minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Store, stuck around, but denounced Ahmadinejad's remarks, saying "The president of Iran chose to place Iran as the odd man out." Ban Ki-Moon and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay--both of whom had earlier deplored and regretted the U.S. decision to boycott the conference--weighed in to deplore and regret Ahmadinejad's remarks.

Still not done, Ahmadinejad later on Monday afternoon held a press conference at the U.N. He then decamped to his plush hotel, just up the road, to attend a dinner for some 500 guests, including his entourage (for whom the Swiss government requisitioned some 40 hotel rooms) and members of the local Iranian community.

By Monday evening, Ahmadinejad's speech, and the walkout, were all over the news. On Tuesday, Ahmadinejad having departed the scene, the U.N. turned its attention full bore to damage control. According to the original schedule, the grand finale of the conference wasn't supposed to come until Friday, when--after a lot more talk at least masquerading as debate--the conference assembly was scheduled to stamp its collective approval on a final "outcome document."

But it seems that after the adventures of Ahmadinejad on Monday, the U.N. wanted to put an end to any further publicity emanating from this conference.

So, despite a long list of speakers still waiting for the podium, plus more than 200 U.N.-accredited nongovernmental organizations on hand hoping for "dialogue," a U.N. body known as the conference's "Main Committee" abruptly moved up production of the outcome document--which embodies the official results of the conference. By late afternoon on Tuesday, the second day of the five day gathering, High Commissioner Pillay stepped forth to announce that the outcome document had been approved.

Indeed, according to U.N. spokespersons, the outcome document was approved by a "consensus" of member states. That's an intriguing interpretation of a decision in which some members of the U.N.--the U.S. for instance-- were, with good reason, dissenting so strongly as to boycott the entire gathering.

Officially, at that point, Durban II still had three days left to go. Unofficially, it was over. Clutching copies of the outcome document, some members of the press headed for the bar--perhaps to fortify themselves before plowing through all 16 pages and 143 articles of this Durban Review premature final product.

Country delegates and U.N. staff sauntered into the afternoon sunlight, some making for the shiny ranks of BMWs and Mercedes in the parking lot, some strolling past the meticulously tended flowerbeds, lush lawns and fluttering flags, toward the main pedestrian exit of this vast complex that once housed the failed League of Nations.

It was clear the U.N. wished to make no more headlines with this particular conference. And yet, inside the building, the machinery--with its full complement of blue-uniformed security guards, secretaries, aides and speeches--ground on, spewing forth stacks of schedules and statements into an almost deserted press room. On the fringes of a conference that no longer had a core, scores of NGO staffers lingered for activities such as watching a mid-day performance by South Africa's Surialanga Dance Company.

So, after all the controversy and drama, what was the Durban Review Conference really about?

The debacle this week was, above all, a natural product of the U.N. system. The real basis for fighting racism is neatly summed up in five words from the U.S. Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal." But in the U.N. calculus, it is not the equality of individual men or women that matters most. Instead, the U.N. tends to exalt the "equality" of sovereign states--as if there were no difference, say, between North and South Korea; Iran and the U.S.

That's why the president of terrorist-sponsoring, nuclear weapons-proliferating, U.N.-sanctioned Iran can jet into a U.N. conference on racism and be handed a turn at the podium. Beyond that, in the manner of central planners of the past century, the U.N. tends to seek equality not of basic rights, but of results. This entails not a defense of individual freedom, but a vast and elaborate lattice of machinery for social engineering, wealth transfers, government training programs and other projects in which politicians and bureaucrats decide who needs what.

In such a system, geared to defend first and foremost the interests not of individual human beings, but of governments, it's no surprise that some of the world's worst tyrannies end up hijacking such worthy causes as combating racism. And they've been at it for awhile: This week's train wreck of Durban II was a long time in the making. It was styled as a re-hash of the U.N.'s 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa. That jamboree was supposed to focus on racism, but instead turned into such a frenzy of Israel-bashing and U.S.-trashing that the U.S. delegation walked out.

The U.N. preparatory committee for this week's conference on "Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance" was chaired by Iran's fellow tyranny, Libya, and included among its liveliest members Russia, Cuba and Pakistan (speaking on behalf of the 57-member, despot-dominated Organization of the Islamic Conference), as well as Iran itself. Ahmadinejad's appearance on the U.N. stage this week--complete with his predictable tirade there--should have come as no surprise.

The U.N. currently hosts Iran on the governing boards of some of its lead agencies and has welcomed Ahmadinejad repeatedly to the U.N. General Assembly stage in New York. Not least, in one of the main hallways of the U.N.'s Geneva complex, near the Durban II assembly chamber, hangs a big silk maroon-tinted carpet of intricate design. It is framed in gold, and below it appears the inscription: "Presented by the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the Occasion of its 30th Anniversary." It is dated just two months ago: "February 2009." With the U.N.'s warm relations with the Islamic Republic so showcased, Ahmadinejad had reason to expect a red carpet rolled out for him in Geneva.

As far as there was a redeeming aspect to this conference, it came not from the U.N., but from the protests made against it. For almost two years, a handful of watchdog outfits, such as Anne Bayefsky's New York-based EyeOnTheUN.org and Hillel Neuer's Geneva-based UN Watch have called attention to the hypocrisies, travesties and raw anti-Semitism that were being worked by the likes of Libya and Iran into plans for Durban II.

Surrounding the conference itself, there have been a number of "side events" at which genuine champions of human rights have spoken up. On Tuesday, for instance, despite heckling, there was a terrific presentation from an NGO lineup that included holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz, actor Jon Voight and the Hoover Institution's Shelby Steele--who warned that the U.N.'s perverse version of fighting "racism" was a damaging distraction from the real fight for the basic human right to liberty.

When the best you can say about a U.N. world conference is that it deserved boycotting, inspired some well-deserved condemnation and tried to hide its own disgrace by effectively folding early, it's high time to consider that the U.N. ought to take a long break from such themes as engineering a global solution to "racism," and focus instead on dreaming up some way to clean up its own act. Forbes

Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.com.