Bandung Conference
The first large-scale Asian–African or Afro–Asian Conference (Indonesian: Konferensi Asia–Afrika)—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, Indonesia.[1] The twenty-nine countries that participated represented a total population of 1.5 billion people, 54% of the world's population.[2] The conference was organized by Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and Pakistan and was coordinated by Ruslan Abdulgani, secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia.
Asian–African Conference
Konferensi Asia–Afrika
18 to 24 April 1955
304 representatives
The conference's stated aims were to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by any nation. The conference was a step towards the eventual creation of the Non-Aligned Movement (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.[3]
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[edit]
Indonesia's President Sukarno and India's 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, 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.[4] Decolonization was underway and an increasing number of new nations in Africa or Asia emerged with, for the first time, its own diplomatic corps and need to integrate into the international system.
Mao Zedong of China 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. [5] In his efforts to present China as a model, Mao publicly maintained a friendly, conciliatory tone towards newly independent Asian nations,[6] while simultaneously denouncing the Western colonial empires.[7]
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.[8]
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 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; and Indonesia's desire to promote its case in the West New Guinea dispute with the Netherlands. 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.[9]
Sukarno portrayed himself as the leader of this group of states, which he later described as "NEFOS" (Newly Emerging Forces).[10]
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.[11] Plans for the Bandung conference were announced in December 1954.[12]