
The first large-scale Asian–African or Afro–Asian Conference (), also known as the Bandung Conference, was a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, which took place on 18–24 April 1955 in
Bandung,
West Java
West Java (, ) is an Indonesian Provinces of Indonesia, province on the western part of the island of Java, with its provincial capital in Bandung. West Java is bordered by the province of Banten and the country's capital region of Jakarta to t ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
. The twenty-nine countries that participated represented a total population of 1.5 billion people, 54% of the world's population. The conference was organized by Indonesia,
Burma
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...
(Myanmar),
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
,
Ceylon
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...
(Sri Lanka), and
Pakistan
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
and was coordinated by
Ruslan Abdulgani, secretary general of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia.
The conference's stated aims were to promote
Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose
colonialism
Colonialism is the control of another territory, natural resources and people by a foreign group. Colonizers control the political and tribal power of the colonised territory. While frequently an Imperialism, imperialist project, colonialism c ...
or
neocolonialism by any nation. The conference was a step towards the eventual creation of the
Non-Aligned Movement
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a forum of 121 countries that Non-belligerent, are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. It was founded with the view to advancing interests of developing countries in the context of Cold W ...
(NAM) yet the two initiatives ran in parallel during the 1960s, even coming in confrontation with one another prior to the
2nd Cairo NAM Conference in 1964.
In 2005, on the 50th anniversary of the original conference, leaders from Asian and African countries met in Jakarta and Bandung to launch the New Asian–African Strategic Partnership (NAASP). They pledged to promote political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the two continents.
Background
Indonesian President
Sukarno and Indian Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru were key organizers in their quest to build a nonaligned movement that would win the support of the newly emerging nations of Asia and Africa. Nehru first got the idea at the
Asian Relations Conference, held in India in March 1947, on the eve of India's independence. There was a second 19-nation conference regarding the status of Indonesia, held in
New Delhi
New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Parliament ...
, India, in January 1949. Although Nehru initially attached relatively little importance to Indonesia's calls to convene the Bandung Conference, he showed increasing interest during and after late 1954 due to his concern about American foreign policy as it applied to Asia, his belief that he could secure a guarantee of peaceful coexistence with China, and his desire to avoid embarrassing Indonesia.
Decolonization was underway and an increasing number of new nations in Africa or Asia were emerging with, for the first time, their own diplomatic corps and need to integrate into the international system.
Chairman
The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the gro ...
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...
of the
Chinese Communist Party
The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...
was also a key organizer, backed by his influential right-hand man,
Premier and Foreign Minister
Zhou Enlai. Mao believed that an anti-colonial nationalist and anti-imperialist agenda was underway in Africa and Asia, and he wanted to make China the leader of these forces.
[Jung Chang and John Halliday, ''Mao: The Unknown Story'', pp. 603–604, 2007 edition, Vintage Books] In his efforts to present China as a model, Mao publicly maintained a friendly, conciliatory tone towards newly independent Asian nations,
while simultaneously denouncing the Western colonial empires.
At the Colombo Powers conference in April 1954, Indonesia proposed a global conference. A planning group met in
Bogor, West Java in late December 1954 and formally decided to hold the conference in April 1955. They had a series of goals in mind: to promote goodwill and cooperation among the new nations, to explore in advance their mutual interests, to examine social economic and cultural problems, to focus on problems of special interest to their peoples such as racism and colonialism, and to enhance the international visibility of Asia and Africa in world affairs.
The Bandung Conference reflected what the organizers regarded as a reluctance by the Western powers to consult with them on decisions affecting Asia in a setting of
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
tensions: their concern over tension between the People's Republic of China and the United States, their desire to lay firmer foundations for China's peace relations with themselves and the West, their opposition to colonialism (especially
France's neocolonialism in North Africa and its colonial rule in
Algeria
Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...
), and Indonesia's desire to promote its case in the
West New Guinea dispute with the
Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
. One of Sukarno's primary goals with the conference was to build support for Indonesia's claim to West Papua and to prevent the Netherlands from transferring sovereignty of West Papua to indigenous Papuans.
Sukarno portrayed himself as the leader of this group of states, which he later described as "NEFOS" (Newly Emerging Forces).
On 4 December 1954, the United Nations announced that Indonesia had successfully gotten the issue of West New Guinea placed on the agenda of the 1955 General Assembly. Plans for the Bandung conference were announced in December 1954.
Discussion
Major debate centered on the question of whether
Soviet policies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia should be censured along with Western colonialism. A memo was submitted by 'The Moslem Nations under Soviet Imperialism', accusing the Soviet authorities of massacres and mass deportations in Muslim regions, but it was never debated.
A consensus was reached in which "colonialism in all of its manifestations" was condemned, implicitly censuring the Soviet Union, as well as the West. China played an important role in the conference and strengthened its relations with other Asian nations. Having survived
an assassination attempt on the way to the conference, the Chinese premier,
Zhou Enlai, displayed a moderate and conciliatory attitude that tended to quiet fears of some anticommunist delegates concerning China's intentions.
Later in the conference, Zhou Enlai signed an
agreement on dual nationality with Indonesian foreign minister
Sunario. World observers closely watched Zhou. He downplayed revolutionary communism and strongly endorsed the right of all nations to choose their own economic and political systems, including even capitalism. His moderation and reasonableness made a very powerful impression for his own diplomatic reputation and for China. By contrast, Nehru was bitterly disappointed at the generally negative reception he received. Senior diplomats called him arrogant. Zhou said privately, "I have never met a more arrogant man than Mr. Nehru."
China began voicing
support for Palestine at Bandung, with Zhou stating, "
ere was a parallel between the problems of Palestine and Formosa; neither could be solved peacefully unless intervention by outside forces was excluded; China was suffering from the same problem as the Arab countries."
Participants
Some nations were given "observer status". Such was the case of
Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
, who sent Ambassador Bezerra de Menezes.
Declaration
A 10-point "declaration on promotion of world peace and cooperation", called ''Dasasila Bandung'' (Bandung's Ten Principles, or Bandung Spirit, or Bandung Declaration; styled after Indonesia's
Pancasila; or Ten Principles of Peaceful Coexistence), incorporating the principles of the
United Nations Charter
The Charter of the United Nations is the foundational treaty of the United Nations (UN). It establishes the purposes, governing structure, and overall framework of the United Nations System, UN system, including its United Nations System#Six ...
as well as
Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence was adopted unanimously as item G in the final communiqué of the conference:
# Respect for fundamental human rights and for the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations
# Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations
# Recognition of the equality of all races and of the equality of all nations large and small
# Abstention from intervention or interference in the internal affairs of another country
# Respect for the right of each nation to defend itself, singly or collectively, in
conformity
Conformity or conformism is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to social group, group norms, politics or being like-minded. Social norm, Norms are implicit, specific rules, guidance shared by a group of individuals, that guide t ...
with the charter of the United Nations
# (a) Abstention from the use of arrangements of collective defence to serve any particular interests of the big powers
(b) Abstention by any country from exerting pressures on other countries
# Refraining from acts or threats of aggression or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any country
# Settlement of all international disputes by peaceful means, such as negotiation, conciliation, arbitration or judicial settlement as well as other peaceful means of the parties own choice, in conformity with the charter of the United Nations
# Promotion of mutual interests and cooperation
# Respect for justice and international obligations
The final Communique of the Conference underscored the need for developing countries to loosen their economic dependence on the leading industrialised nations by providing technical assistance to one another through the exchange of experts and technical assistance for developmental projects, as well as the exchange of technological know-how and the establishment of regional training and research institutes.
United States involvement

For the US, the Conference accentuated a central dilemma of its Cold War policy; by currying favor with Third World nations by claiming opposition to colonialism, it risked alienating its colonialist European allies. The US security establishment also feared that the Conference would expand China's regional power. In January 1955, the US formed a "Working Group on the Afro-Asian Conference" that included the
Operations Coordinating Board (OCB), the
Office of Intelligence Research (OIR), the
Department of State, the
Department of Defense, the
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
(CIA), and the
United States Information Agency
The United States Information Agency (USIA) was a United States government agency devoted to propaganda which operated from 1953 to 1999.
Previously existing United States Information Service (USIS) posts operating out of U.S. embassies wor ...
(USIA). The OIR and USIA followed a course of "Image Management" for the US, using overt and covert propaganda to portray the US as friendly and to warn participants of the Communist menace.
The United States, at the urging of Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles, shunned the conference and was not officially represented. However, the administration issued a series of statements during the lead-up to the Conference. These suggested that the US would provide economic aid and attempted to reframe the issue of colonialism as a threat by China and the
Eastern Bloc.
[Parker, "Small Victory, Missed Chance" (2006), p. 162.]
Representative
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (D-N.Y.) attended the conference, sponsored by ''
Ebony'' and ''
Jet'' magazines instead of the U.S. government.
Powell spoke at some length in favor of American foreign policy there which assisted the United States's standing with the Non-Aligned. When Powell returned to the United States, he urged President
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Congress to oppose colonialism and pay attention to the priorities of emerging Third World nations.
African American author
Richard Wright attended the conference
with funding from the
Congress for Cultural Freedom. Wright spent about three weeks in Indonesia, devoting a week to attending the conference and the rest of his time to interacting with Indonesian artists and intellectuals in preparation to write several articles and a book on his trip to Indonesia and attendance at the conference. Wright's essays on the trip appeared in several Congress for Cultural Freedom magazines, and his book on the trip was published as ''
The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference''. Several of the artists and intellectuals with whom Wright interacted (including
Mochtar Lubis,
Asrul Sani,
Sitor Situmorang and
Beb Vuyk) continued discussing Wright's visit after he left Indonesia. Wright extensively praised the conference.
Outcome and legacy
The conference was later followed by the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Conference held in Cairo in September 1957 and subsequently by the
Belgrade Summit in 1961, which resulted in the formation of the
Non-Aligned Movement
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a forum of 121 countries that Non-belligerent, are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. It was founded with the view to advancing interests of developing countries in the context of Cold W ...
.
Asian-African Summit of 2005
To mark the 50th anniversary of The Summit, Heads of State and Government of Asian-African countries attended a new Asian-African Summit from 20 to 24 April 2005 in Bandung and
Jakarta
Jakarta (; , Betawi language, Betawi: ''Jakartè''), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta (; ''DKI Jakarta'') and formerly known as Batavia, Dutch East Indies, Batavia until 1949, is the capital and largest city of Indonesia and ...
hosted by President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (born 9 September 1949), commonly referred to as SBY, is an Indonesian politician and retired Indonesian Army, army general who served as the sixth president of Indonesia from 2004 to 2014 and the second president of Ind ...
. Attended by
Prime Minister of Japan,
Junichiro Koizumi;
President of China,
Hu Jintao;
United Nations Secretary General,
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan (8 April 193818 August 2018) was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder a ...
;
President of Pakistan,
Pervez Musharraf;
President of Afghanistan,
Hamid Karzai;
Prime Minister of Malaysia,
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi;
Sultan of Brunei,
Hassanal Bolkiah and
President of South Africa,
Thabo Mbeki, some sessions of the new conference took place in Gedung Merdeka (Independence Building), the venue of the original conference.
Of the 106 nations invited to the historic summit, 89 were represented by their heads of state or government or ministers.
The Summit was attended by 54 Asian and 52 African countries.
The 2005 Asian African Summit yielded, inter-alia, the Declaration of the New Asian–African Strategic Partnership (NAASP),
the Joint Ministerial Statement on the NAASP Plan of Action, and the Joint Asian African Leaders' Statement on Tsunami, Earthquake and other Natural Disasters. The conclusion of aforementioned declaration of NAASP is the Nawasila (nine principles) supporting political, economic, and socio-cultural cooperation.
The Summit concluded a follow-up mechanism for institutionalization process in the form of Summit concurrent with Business Summit every four years, Ministerial Meeting every two years, and Sectoral Ministerial as well as Technical Meeting if deemed necessary.
Other anniversaries
On the 60th anniversary of the Asian-African Conference and the 10th anniversary of the NAASP, a 3rd summit was held in Bandung and Jakarta from 21 to 25 April 2015, with the theme ''Strengthening South-South Cooperation to Promote World Peace and Prosperity''.
Hosted by President
Joko Widodo
Joko Widodo (; born 21 June 1961), often known mononymously as Jokowi, is an Indonesian politician, engineer, and businessman who served as the seventh president of Indonesia from 2014 to 2024. Previously a member of the Indonesian Democratic ...
of Indonesia, delegates from 109 Asian and African countries, 16 observer countries, and 25 international organizations participated,
including
Prime Minister of Japan,
Shinzo Abe;
President of China,
Xi Jinping;
Prime Minister of Singapore,
Lee Hsien Loong;
King Abdullah II of Jordan;
Prime Minister of Malaysia,
Najib Tun Razak;
President of Myanmar,
Thein Sein;
King
King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...
Mswati III of Swaziland and
Prime Minister of Nepal,
Sushil Koirala.
See also
*
Cairo Conference
*
Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organisation
*
Asian–African Legal Consultative Organization
*
Conference of the New Emerging Forces
*
Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence
*
Jakarta–Peking Axis
*
Non-Aligned Movement
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a forum of 121 countries that Non-belligerent, are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. It was founded with the view to advancing interests of developing countries in the context of Cold W ...
*
Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty
*
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Southern Cone, NATO, Western European countries and oth ...
References
Further reading
* Acharya, Amitav. "Studying the Bandung conference from a Global IR perspective." ''Australian Journal of International Affairs'' 70.4 (2016): 342–357
Online
* Acharya, Amitav. "Who are the norm makers? The Asian-African conference in Bandung and the evolution of norms." ''Global Governance'' 20.3 (2014): 405–417
Online* ''Asia-Africa Speaks From Bandung.'' Jakarta: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia, 1955.
* Ampiah, Kweku. ''The Political and Moral Imperatives of the Bandung Conference of 1955 : the Reactions of the US, UK and Japan.'' Folkestone, UK : Global Oriental, 2007.
* Brown, Colin. 2012. "The Bandung Conference and Indonesian Foreign Policy", Ch 9 in Anne Booth, Chris Manning and
Thee Kian Wie, 2012, ''Essays in Honour of Joan Hardjono'', Jakarta: Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia.
* Burke, Roland. "The compelling dialogue of freedom: Human rights at the Bandung Conference." ''Human Rights Quarterly'' 28 (2006): 947+.
* Dinkel, Jürgen, The Non-Aligned Movement. Genesis, Organization and Politics (1927–1992), New Perspectives on the Cold War 5, Brill: Leiden/Boston 2019.
*
Finnane, Antonia, and Derek McDougall, eds, ''Bandung 1955: Little Histories''. Melbourne: Monash Asia Institute, 2010.
* Kahin, George McTurnan. ''The Asian-African Conference: Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955.'' Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956.
* Lee, Christopher J., ed, ''Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives''. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010.
* Mackie, Jamie. ''Bandung 1955: Non-Alignment and Afro-Asian Solidarity.'' Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2005.
* Parker, Jason C. "Small Victory, Missed Chance: The Eisenhower Administration, the Bandung Conference, and the Turning of the Cold War." In ''The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War.'' Ed. Kathryn C. Statler & Andrew L. Johns. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.
* Parker, Jason. "Cold War II: The Eisenhower Administration, the Bandung Conference, and the reperiodization of the postwar era." ''Diplomatic History'' 30.5 (2006): 867–892.
*
Shimazu, Naoko. "Diplomacy as theatre: staging the Bandung Conference of 1955." ''Modern Asian Studies'' 48.1 (2014): 225–252. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X13000371
* Wood, Sally Percival. "'Chou gags critics in BANDOENG or How the Media Framed Premier Zhou Enlai at the Bandung Conference, 1955" ''Modern Asian Studies'' 44.5 (2010): 1001–1027.
*
* Utama, Wildan Sena. "A Forgotten Bandung: The Afro-Asian Students’ Conference and the Call for Decolonisation," In Carolien Stolte and Su Lin Lewis (ed.). ''The Lives of Cold War Afro-Asianism.'' Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1017/9789400604346
* Utama, Wildan Sena. "Engineering Solidarity: Indonesia, Afro-Asian Networks, and Third World Anti-Imperialism 1950s-1960s," ''Doctoral Thesis.'', University of Bristol, 2023. https://hdl.handle.net/1983/37cc4ff7-9e1a-4b8a-a1fc-b625ded3b12e
External links
Modern History Sourcebook: Prime Minister Nehru: Speech to Asian-African Conference Political Committee, 1955*
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