In 1993 a fifty-state Asian-Islamic bloc formed to oppose Western human rights positions

Evidence

The differences over human rights between the West and other civilizations and the limited ability of the West to achieve its goals were clearly revealed in the U.N. World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in June 1993. On one side were the European and North American countries; on the other side was a bloc of about fifty non-Western states, the fifteen most active members of which included the governments of one Latin American country (Cuba), one Buddhist country (Myanmar), four Confucian countries with widely varying political ideologies, economic systems, and levels of development (Singapore, Vietnam, North Korea, and China), and nine Muslim countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, and Libya). The leadership of this Asian-Islamic grouping came from China, Syria, and Iran. In between these two groupings were the Latin American countries, apart from Cuba, which often supported the West, and African and Orthodox countries which sometimes supported but more often opposed Western positions. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 521