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In 1955, delegates from 29 Asian and African nations gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, at the invitation of President Sukarno. Most of these countries had only recently emerged from colonial rule, and together they represented more than half of the world's population. Their meeting produced a framework built on sovereignty, human rights, and economic, cultural, and political cooperation—values they placed above alignment with the era's rival superpowers. Seventy-one years later, an opinion piece published by Al Jazeera argues that the "Bandung spirit" deserves a fresh look.
The conference's central achievement was South-South solidarity. Participants sought a path that did not depend on either the United States or the Soviet Union, the two great powers of the Cold War. As the so-called Third World alliance took shape, it generated practical vehicles for decolonisation, including the Non-Aligned Movement and institutions such as UN Trade and Development, or UNCTAD. Author Nabil Ahmed notes that a new Al Jazeera film explores how this agenda was received by established powers.
Despite the conference's stated aim of avoiding antagonism toward great powers, the Bandung project was treated as a direct threat. Countries that committed to decolonisation faced severe pushback—coups, invasions, economic warfare, and debt and austerity crises. According to the article, these pressures left many nations beholden to former colonial masters rather than free to pursue their own development aspirations.
The structures of inequality identified at Bandung have not disappeared. Global North countries, home to just 20 percent of humanity, control 69 percent of global wealth, even as parts of the Global South, particularly East Asia, have experienced dramatic growth. Meanwhile, low- and middle-income countries devote nearly half their national budgets on average to debt repayments, most of it owed to creditors in wealthy nations. Wealth inequality has also soared within countries, with just 3,000 billionaires holding assets equivalent to more than 15 percent of global GDP.
The article acknowledges that it would be a stretch to claim the level of South-South cooperation envisioned at Bandung still endures. It cites a recent Economist remark calling a muted Bandung anniversary a sign of weak solidarity. Yet the piece argues that external realities are forcing a reckoning that nostalgia alone cannot achieve, as powerful states act with impunity and erode the brittle cover of the so-called rules-based order.
Several current crises illustrate the stakes. The US-Israel war on Iran has brought violence and devastation across the region and disrupted global fuel and fertiliser prices, hurting ordinary people far beyond the conflict zone. Tariff battles are battering poorer economies, and climate breakdown produces profoundly unequal effects while its drivers remain concentrated in the wealthiest nations. The ongoing genocide in Gaza, the article notes, has been met with impunity for its perpetrators.
Underlying these developments is a deeper historical grievance: much of the world never regarded the post-World War II order, dominated by powerful nations, as truly legitimate. The Bandung project made that clear. But the order did not need to be legitimate to be unavoidable, because the alternatives were too costly. Today, however, even compliance offers scant security in a world where "might is right," pushing wealthy nations to confront what the rest of the world has long understood.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva captured this shift in responding to US President Donald Trump's tariff threats, saying: "The world has changed; we do not want an emperor." The article draws five lessons from Bandung for rethinking global cooperation in this moment of rupture.
First, cooperation by itself is value-neutral; substance is what counts. More cooperation that advances neoliberal priorities—whether among middle powers or poorer nations—will not solve the problem. Second, better institutions are urgently needed. The piece calls for serious financial institutions built for the Global South, and for bold reform of the IMF and World Bank so they move away from austerity toward addressing inequality and respecting national sovereignty.
Debt governance also demands rebalancing. Creditor groups such as the Paris Club should be counterbalanced by borrowers' clubs of poorer nations, the article argues. It points to the UNCTAD Borrowers' Platform, set to launch next month, as evidence that countries can work together to reshape the rules of debt restructuring. Third, reducing inequality between countries is only part of the picture without addressing inequality within and across them. At Bandung, Sukarno warned against "economic control" inside nations, and the article insists every country must tackle the consolidation of wealth and power among a tiny few. Raging against major powers abroad while enabling elites to exploit the poor at home, it states, does not meet the test of economic liberation.
Fourth, concrete international steps are needed: negotiations at the UN for a fairer international tax system that ends tax havens and abuses, efforts to tax the ultrarich everywhere, and a rewrite of intellectual property rules to prevent corporate monopolies that inflict devastating human costs. Fifth, new trade formations should avoid granting special powers to foreign investors and instead prioritise workers' rights and environmental protections. Such South-South cooperation, the article contends, can be vital in confronting the climate crisis.
How cooperation is conducted matters as well. Bandung inspired people in developing and developed countries alike, creating a form of internationalist solidarity that the article says is needed again. Forward-looking policymakers in the Global North have an opportunity to work constructively—contrary to the Trump administration's coercive approach—and to help transform rules that many now concede were rigged. Spain demonstrates that new coalitions on development financing and democracy are possible, while the G20 presidencies of Brazil and South Africa have offered hope for multilateralism, and an International Panel on Inequality shows that Global South-led cooperation on inequality can take shape.
The article concludes that the ultimate push will not come from leaders alone. Implicit in its argument is that the Bandung legacy belongs to nations and peoples who insist on writing the rules of the global economy themselves—a question, it notes, that even rich countries are now asking.
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