The 53 states in the Human Rights Commission held their final meeting before the new 47-member Human Rights Council takes over on June 19.
After two week-long suspensions, the annual meeting gathered for a few hours instead of the usual six weeks to allow heads of the UN's regional groups to formally hand over to the forthcoming body.
Delegates observed a minute's silence for victims of human rights violations worldwide and passed a closing resolution.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour said the change was the product of a "quiet revolution" in recent months that should allow the new Council to implement protective human rights standards set by the Commission.
"There are millions of people all over the world, right now, who are looking to the United Nations for protection and redress against the violation of their rights and deprivation of their freedoms," Arbour told the meeting.
"Much will rest on the profound culture shift that must accompany this institutional reform," she added. "Progress cannot be made in an atmosphere of distrust and disrespect and through the pursuit of narrow self-interest."
Set up in the aftermath of World War II in 1946, the Commission was widely regarded as discredited in recent years because governments with a record of abuse and superpower diplomacy stifled concrete action.
However, the United Nations human rights office defended the body's "proud history of achievements" on the eve of its last session, starting with the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
It highlighted the "revolutionary importance" of the body of international laws created by the Commission which also underpin action against genocide, racism and torture or are meant to protect children.
Until the 1970s, the Commission's statutes did not allow it to target governments directly with criticism.
But that barrier started to tumble when it set up the system of independent special rapporteurs and experts, initially to keep tabs on abuse by the military dictatorship in Chile, then the apartheid regime in South Africa.
"They have given a voice to the often silenced victims of human rights abuses," said Arbour's spokesman Jose Diaz.
The advocacy group Human Rights Watch said the new Council, which will retain the special rapporteurs, should be a major improvement.
But it cautioned that its effectiveness would depend on the ingredient that was lacking in its predecessor -- political will.
"States like Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, or Zimbabwe, which are members of the old Commission, cannot be allowed onto the new Council," said HRW director Kenneth Roth.
The UN General Assembly is due to elect the new members on May 9 in New York.