Haemorrhaging of western influence at UN wrecks attempts to push human rights agenda

· Power shifting to Russia and China, study shows
· EU defeated on issues from Burma to Balkans

The west's efforts to use the United Nations to promote its values and shape the global agenda are failing, according to a detailed study published yesterday.

A sea change in the balance of power in favour of China, India, Russia and other emerging states is wrecking European and US efforts to entrench human rights, liberties and multilateralism. Western policies in crisis regions as diverse as Georgia, Zimbabwe, Burma or the Balkans are suffering serial defeats in what the study identifies as a protracted trend.

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The haemorrhaging of western power, as reflected in longer-term voting patterns in key UN bodies, is mirrored by the increasing clout of China, Russia and the Islamic world, according to an audit of European influence at the UN by the European Council on Foreign Relations.

"The EU is suffering a slow-motion crisis at the UN," says the report, noting that the west is now being regularly outwitted in global diplomatic poker by the Chinese and Russians. "The problem is fading power to set the rules. The UN is increasingly being shaped by China, Russia and their allies ... The west is in disarray. The EU's rifts with the US on many human rights issues at the UN in the Bush era have weakened both."

US and European failure to win the day at the UN security council in recent votes on Zimbabwe and Burma as well as defeats last year on Kosovo or Darfur and the constant struggle to muster support for global action against Iran because of its nuclear ambitions are traced as part of a broader decline over the past decade.

Using a programme designed to analyse voting patterns and statistics, the thinktank found that European policies on human rights enjoyed the support of 72% of UN members a decade ago but only 48% by last year, while the US suffered a steeper collapse from 77% to 30%.

"The pattern of votes in the general assembly shows that opposition to the EU is growing, spurred by a common resistance to European efforts at promoting human rights," said the study.

The beneficiaries of this disaffection with the west have been China and Russia, which defend national sovereignty and non-intervention in sovereign countries no matter how grievous the atrocities and human rights violations blamed on national governments. Over the past decade support for Chinese and Russian stances on human rights issues has soared from less than 50% to 74% in the UN general assembly.

The assembly kicked off this week in New York with the west bracing itself for another debacle. Serbia is to use the session to demand a vote on the "illegality" of the secession last February of Kosovo, whose breakaway was strongly backed by the US and most of the EU, and to refer the dispute to the UN's international court of justice. Despite strenuous lobbying by the Europeans to prevent the vote, they have conceded defeat. Only 46 of the 192 UN states have recognised Kosovo's independence. And western attempts to rally support for Georgia in the Caucasus crisis will be rebuffed by the Russians.

"The EU has collectively failed to adapt to new power trends," said Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president and a chairman of the thinktank.

The setbacks for the west at the UN in New York are compounded by a worse record in winning the battles for rights and freedoms at the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council. In March the Islamic bloc changed the mandate for the council's rapporteur on freedom of expression, charging him, in the wake of the Danish cartoons crisis, with the obligation to record blasphemy. Critics said the post was supposed to function as an agent of liberty, but became an instrument of repression.

"The head of steam building up in the Islamic world for worldwide defamation legislation is huge," said Keith Porteous-Wood, director of Britain's National Secular Society. "The Human Rights Council can no longer serve a useful purpose."

In the council's two-year existence, the 19 European countries on the 47-strong body have been marginalised, mired in despair and a sense of futility after losing more than half the votes conducted.

The poor European record on winning the world's hearts and minds contrasts with Brussels' habit of talking up the merits of its "soft power" attractiveness, and indicates that the EU's huge financial investment in being the world's biggest aid donor and the UN's biggest funder is not translating into political gains.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/18/unitednations.china