Within the UN, there has been a growing challenge to Western power by the BRICS countries, economically and politically, for as the BRICS countries increasingly develop economically, they have been able to shift the balance of power, thereby challenging Western hegemony. The UN, as a bastion of Western neoliberal ideology, was instituted with the rise of American hegemony and has been viewed as largely furthering Western interests and ideas of rule of law, market economies, and human rights in the name of peace. However, given the disparities in the ability and willingness–economically, politically, militarily, etc.–to implement and enforce such policies, many developing countries have begun to form an oppositional bloc to Western powers, namely the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.

This is has manifested itself in terms of resistance to Western financial institutions and free trade policies, which are viewed as propagating Western interests at the expense of the economic well-being of developing countries, and instead have advocated for policies that relax free trade provisions, and environmental and labor standards for developing countries. Also part of the growing counter-hegemonic narrative of the BRICS countries is evident in the divergence in the interpretation of human rights and on how and when they should be implemented within countries. The West espouses a very different doctrine of human rights, particularly concerning civil and political rights, than do BRICS and developing countries, whose emphasis is almost always on economic and cultural rights with at times blatant disregard for civil and political rights. This is particularly evident through the East Asian understanding of human rights put forth by East Asian statesmen, who state that East Asian values privilege the collective over the individual, stability over conflict, welfare over freedom, and authority over self-assertion (see Bell, Nathan, and Peleg, 2001). Therefore, the Asian Values debate has produced a counter-hegemonic narrative within human rights, in which East Asian states and other developing countries that have joined the bloc, have argued for a relativist interpretation of human rights over universalism that prizes economic development, sovereignty, and political stability, such that accordingly Western human rights values long espoused and institutionalized in the UN under the UDHR, are inimical to developing countries’ priorities, cultural practices, and objectives. Thus, even though the UN is viewed as a neoliberal institution serving the interests of Western powers and propagating Western global hegemony, there has been a growing counter-hegemonic narrative put forth by the increasingly economically and politically powerful BRICS countries, which has attracted other developing countries to present a mounting counter-hegemonic discourse to Western international organizations and ideology.