JAKARTA: The 1955 Asian-African Conference was instrumental in shaping international law that helped free colonised peoples from their shackles, and amid recent geopolitical tensions, the world may need another Bandung moment to remind countries to foster peace and uphold the rule of law, a former International Court of Justice (ICJ) president said in a public lecture.
Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, a Somali lawyer who served as an ICJ judge from 2009 to 2025 and as the court’s president from 2018 to 2021, said the international rule of law was under pressure from militarily powerful states whose actions had undermined principles and rules of international relations enshrined in the United Nations Charter.
The UN Charter itself had not initially benefited all nations, Yusuf argued.
In the decades after World War II, many Asian and African nations still had to fight for independence from colonialism, with some resorting to force.
While the UN Charter in its early years had not been able to fully end colonialism, it paved the way for decolonisation through principles of equal rights, self-determination and sovereign equality of states, which were further developed at the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, West Java.
“If it was not for the Bandung Conference, the international rule of law to which I refer here would not have really acquired a concrete shape,” Yusuf said during a public lecture in Jakarta on Thursday.
He said Bandung was essential in operationalising concepts such as equal rights and self-determination for Asian and African countries.
It was also the first declaration by a group of states to affirm that colonialism was contrary to international law.
He also credited Bandung with helping pave the way for the eventual adoption of UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 1514, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, in December 1960.
Decolonisation was still ongoing at the time, with European countries seeking to retain colonies in Asia and Africa.
“Asian and African countries, using the Bandung principles and the Bandung Declaration, had to confront their fellow members of the United Nations from Europe,” Yusuf said.
The efforts of Asian and African countries culminated in the adoption of UNGA Resolution 2625, the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States, in October 1970.
The resolution codified key principles of international law, including the prohibition of the use of force in international relations.
Yusuf said the evolution of the international order enabled by the Bandung Conference was something people “have taken for granted”.
“It is a very recent phenomenon, and it is a phenomenon which needs to be nourished, to be further developed, in order to create a world which is livable for all human beings and where all human beings can live in dignity and in peace among themselves,” Yusuf said.
Yusuf said that amid current geopolitical tensions, the world needed another Bandung moment in which a coalition of states would step up to defend the international rule of law and help end conflicts.
“We need a coalition of states that can actually give momentum to the spirit of Bandung, to a spirit similar to the spirit of Bandung, because what Bandung did was actually to act as a catalyst for efforts by nations to establish the rule of law and do away with colonialism and violation of human rights at the international level,” Yusuf said.
Responding to the former ICJ president’s lecture, lawyer and activist Todung Mulya Lubis said that while the Bandung Conference was important in ending colonialism and helping shape international law, international law today had been weakened and placed under pressure by violations and abuses of power by powerful states.
However, international law still had an important role in fostering peace, and the world should not give up but continue to speak out against injustice, he added.
“I’d love to have another Bandung Conference to mobilize and unite the Global South, because otherwise we are all in dangers with all this abuse of power by the mighty,” Todung said. - Jakarta Post/ANN
