EU losing ground to Russia and China at U.N.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is losing ground on human rights issues at the United Nations to China and Russia, which oppose any interference in countries' internal affairs, a study says.

"The European Union is suffering a slow-motion crisis at the United Nations," write Richard Gowan and Franziska Brantner of the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank.

An analysis of 10 years of U.N. voting statistics shows the EU has lost the regular support of 41 former allies on human rights votes, mostly in Africa and Latin America.

Support for EU positions has fallen from over 70 percent in the late 1990s to around 50 percent in the last two years.

The trend in support for Chinese and Russian positions in the same votes has been almost the exact opposite, leaping from around 50 percent a decade ago to 74 percent for China and 76 percent for Russia in the last General Assembly session.

"This reflects not only their outspoken commitment to sovereignty, but their diplomatic skill in playing the U.N. system," the authors say. [snip]

Rifts between the EU and the United States over human rights and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which prompted the Europeans to withhold support for Washington's candidacy for the Human Rights Council, have weakened the West's position, they say.

[I.e., their America-Derangement Syndrome caused them to cut off their nose to spite their face...

We need scrap the UN and start over with leading democracies - the UN's membership has become more felons than guards]

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