Seventy-one years on, the world is arguing about Bandung again

In 1955, delegates from 29 countries in Asia and Africa, most of them recent colonies, met in Bandung at Sukarno's invitation and agreed on a framework built on sovereignty and on economic, cultural and political cooperation. Writing for Al Jazeera, Nabil Ahmed argues the meeting is worth retelling now because it asked the question everyone is asking in 2026: who gets to write the rules of the global economy? Bandung led to the Non-Aligned Movement and to United Nations bodies such as UNCTAD, which handles trade and development. Many of the countries that signed up paid for it afterwards, he writes, through coups, invasions, economic pressure and debt crises.

The gap he describes is still there in numbers. Rich countries hold 69 per cent of global wealth while making up 20 per cent of humanity. Low- and middle-income countries spend on average nearly half their national budgets on repaying debt, mostly to lenders in rich countries. Money that goes to a creditor is money not going into a clinic or a classroom, which is why debt service, the yearly bill of interest and principal, shapes what a government can offer its own people. Inside countries the split has widened too: about 3,000 billionaires now hold wealth equal to more than 15 per cent of world output.

Ahmed is blunt that Bandung-style solidarity does not really exist today, and he quotes The Economist's line that "a damp squib Bandung anniversary shows a lack of solidarity." His proposals are practical ones: financial institutions built for poorer countries, an IMF and World Bank that stop reaching first for austerity, and borrowers' clubs to balance creditor groups like the Paris Club, starting with the UNCTAD Borrowers' Platform due to launch next month. He ends with a warning pointed inward. Sukarno cautioned against "economic control" within nations, and demanding fairer rules abroad counts for little if the rich keep squeezing the poor at home.

Why it matters

The Bandung name belongs to Indonesia, which makes this argument uncomfortable as well as flattering. The thing to watch next month is the UNCTAD Borrowers' Platform, meant to give borrowing countries some of the bargaining strength lenders already have, and whether Jakarta takes a seat at it. Ahmed's harder point lands closer to home: a government that asks for fairness in the world economy can be measured by how it divides the gains inside its own borders.