The 1993 Vienna declaration was weaker on core freedoms than the 1948 Universal Declaration

Evidence

The Western nations were ill prepared for Vienna, were outnumbered at the conference, and during its proceedings made more concessions than their opponents. As a result, apart from a strong endorsement of women’s rights, the declaration approved by the conference was a minimal one. It was, one human rights supporter observed, “a flawed and contradictory” document, and represented a victory for the Asian-Islamic coalition and a defeat for the West. The Vienna declaration contained no explicit endorsement of the rights to freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and religion, and was thus in many respects weaker than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the U.N. had adopted in 1948. This shift reflected the decline in the power of the West. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 524

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Connects to the broader theme of Western vs non-Western normative conflict; links to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ as another instance of cross-cultural clash over norms being resolved by power rather than consensus.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 524