"China and Russia are leading a stealthy and increasingly successful effort at the United Nations to weaken UN efforts to protect human rights around the world, according to diplomats and activists.
The two countries have used the UN budget panel, known as the fifth committee, to cut funding for human rights monitors and for a senior post in the secretary general's office which is supposed to ensure that human rights – one of three pillars of the UN's function – are not forgotten in its day-to-day work.
The UN Human Rights Up Front initiative was established in 2014, after a series of UN failures in preventing or sounding the alarm over atrocities, culminating in mass killings in Sri Lanka in 2009.
A senior official in the secretary general's office was appointed to ensure that progress was made on the issue throughout the organisation, but funding for that post has been cut this year by the fifth committee, as a result of lobbying by China and Russia...
A western diplomat at the UN conceded that human rights were losing ground at the UN, in part because China had become a more assertive voice, prepared to lead lobbying campaigns, and because Beijing is increasingly leveraging its vast and growing investments in the developing world to win votes for its agenda at the UN..."