Bandung Conference

Asian–African Conference
Konferensi Asia–Afrika
Plenary session during the Bandung Conference
Host country Indonesia
Dates18 to 24 April 1955
CitiesBandung
Participants304 representatives
ChairRuslan Abdulgani
Foreign Minister of Indonesia
Merdeka Building, the main venue in 1955

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.

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.

  1. ^ "Final Communiqué of the Asian-African conference of Bandung (24 April 1955)" (PDF). Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l'Europe. 3 January 2017.
  2. ^ Bandung Conference of 1955 and the resurgence of Asia and Africa Archived 13 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Daily News, Sri Lanka
  3. ^ Bogetić, Dragan (2017). "Sukob Titovog koncepta univerzalizma i Sukarnovog koncepta regionalizma na Samitu nesvrstanih u Kairu 1964" [The Conflict Between Tito's Concept of Universalism and Sukarno's Concept of Regionalism in the 1964 Summit of Non-Aligned Countries in Cairo]. Istorija 20. Veka. 35 (2). Institute for Contemporary History, Belgrade: 101–118. doi:10.29362/IST20VEKA.2017.2.BOG.101-118. S2CID 189123378.