Bandung at 70: Multilateralism in a New Era of Multi-Alignment

In April 2025, Körber-Stiftung and international partners marked the 70^th anniversary of the Bandung Conference with a Global History & Politics Dialogue in Indonesia. When leaders from Asia and Africa gathered in Bandung in 1955, they laid the foundation for the Non-Aligned Movement and called for sovereignty, solidarity, and cooperation. Though often overlooked in Europe, Bandung remains a milestone of global history.

Today, nearly three-quarters of the world is non-aligned – or multi-aligned. The principles first voiced in Bandung continue to resonate, as middle powers seek to navigate between rivalries and forge new coalitions. In a time of geopolitical fragmentation, these impulses provide a toolkit for rethinking multilateralism.

The essays in this volume build on Körber-Stiftung’s Global History & Politics Dialogue in Bandung in April 2025, organized with partners from Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and the UK. They highlight how historical legacies shape present strategies, how South–South and triangular cooperation transform international frameworks, and why engaging with the Global South is indispensable for Europe and Germany.

By bringing historical depth and global perspectives into today’s policy debates, this publication offers fresh insights for shaping the future of multilateralism.

The debates at the dialogue, the essays in this volume and the historical reflections they contain provide the foundation for the recommendations that follow. Our Bandung activities have shown that sovereignty, solidarity and collective advocacy – the impulses behind the Bandung Principles – can be reinterpreted as a toolkit for today. They highlight where Europe must engage as a partner, how South-South and triangular cooperation can reshape global governance, and why middle powers have become indispensable actors. We will continue to carry this debate forward with further dialogues, formats and follow-up publications that will refine these proposals, test them against political realities and add new recommendations to the discussion.

For Europe

1. Act on two fronts: The United States’ leadership after the Second World War established institutions like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and NATO that provided stability and rules. Today, Washington’s ‘America First’ retreat, a Western reluctance to build new flexible frameworks and resistance in parts of the West to reforming existing structures risk excluding Europe from emerging arrangements or leaving global governance dependent on minilateral arrangements. Europe should use its political and economic influence to persuade the United States to recommit to rules-based behaviour and engage with Global South partners to reform international institutions. Failure to do so will only benefit China, which has put forward its alternative with its Global Governance Initiative that combines historical narratives and institutional innovation, attracting Global South partners disillusioned by US unpredictability and European timidity. Europe should start the process of co-building flexible, rules-first frameworks with Global South partners.

2. Engage like-minded states in non-Western forums: Europe should take the Bandung Principles as evidence that many Global South countries have a non-Western, but not an anti-Western, tradition. It should build new cooperations and strengthen existing diplomatic and economic partnerships with like-minded forces within predominantly non-Western groupings, such as BRICS, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This includes engagement with key democratic countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa. The West must confront its colonial history by acknowledging past wrongs, while also proclaiming its achievements with confidence, aligning its rhetoric with fairer policies. It should amplify inclusive historical narratives that stress cooperation, justice and mutual respect.

3. Build collective capacity – and co-own it: Operating on the premise that a more capable Global South is a more effective partner, Europe should move beyond rhetoric and fund concrete mechanisms that strengthen the collective capacity of middle powers and Global South countries, recognizing them as a force for positive transformation. This should include reshaping the global aid architecture; co-financing South-South initiatives through triangular cooperation; establishing knowledge hubs for the study of renewable energy, digital governance and regulation; developing human capital and supporting the development of downstream industries in countries that produce key raw materials.

For Global South countries

1. Collectively reaffirm commitment to the Bandung Principles: The Bandung spirit was tied to the UN Charter’s commitment to sovereign equality and fundamental rights, not to rigid moral narratives of historical guilt. Global South countries should reassert this foundation as the common denominator of international politics and the basis for dialogue. This requires resisting broad-brush labels of ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’, which obscure more than they illuminate. They should leverage historical memory to foster nuanced understandings of ambiguity in international politics rather than moralize around it.

2. Build a ‘buddy system’ and assume responsibility: Emerging middle powers must play a more proactive role in sharing lessons from their economic diversification and regional integration. They should leverage their financial resources and diplomatic influence to advance a South-South economic architecture, moving beyond the aspirational New International Economic Order toward a practicable and more equitable system. Global South initiatives that can be fed into the global discussion as best practices could include setting common standards for sustainable investment, digital trade, and ethical sourcing of critical minerals; creating a debt relief/restructuring framework; and strengthening regional development banks.

3. Mark Bandung at 70 by launching substantive Africa-Asia projects: Global South countries can create joint ventures in strategic sectors like critical minerals and renewable-energy development, and programs that build Africa’s industrial capacity. South-South cooperation could help to move beyond historical patterns of resource exploitation. In addition, Global South countries must use their collective strength (as seen in UN General Assembly resolutions, climate conferences and the COVAX platform during the COVID-19 pandemic) to advocate their interests and to apply the principles of the Non-Aligned Movement.

For all

1. Make international law the common ground: A legal observatory or policy forum should be established, jointly led by a country of the Global South and a European country, to monitor and report on violations of international law, ensuring its non-selective application and reinforcing principles like sovereignty and peaceful coexistence. It is important to recognize that middle powers (e.g., Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Turkey, Mexico, Germany, Saudi Arabia) have the greatest economic and strategic stake in a predictable, rules-based order. A steering group of them should be created to reform international institutions. It would work incrementally, learning from ‘easy wins’ and eventually move on to the more intractable reform of the UN Security Council. These actions can demonstrate how unity can emerge from diversity.

2. Reimagine solidarity beyond state-led institutions: Policy-makers can experiment with hybrid forms of diplomacy that combine formal frameworks with small, flexible and locally rooted initiatives. For instance, the past attempts at ‘Afro-Asianism’ show that webs of solidarity often thrived in non-institutional, localized and fluid spaces – from conferences to informal gatherings – before becoming diluted once institutionalized. Bandung’s ‘everyday internationalism’ can bridge humanistic visions of world politics and realpolitik to prevent the stagnation seen in the Non-Aligned Movement. The crucial role of nongovernmental organizations, philanthropic foundations and civil society networks in advancing human rights, climate action and democracy must be recognized and funded. Cross-border civil-society networks should also be backed to counter the ‘nationalist international’ of right-wing populism.

3. Adapt peacekeeping to today’s conflicts: The UN should utilize the New Agenda for Peace framework to shift resources from crisis response to preventing conflict through diplomacy, early warning and risk reduction. Peacekeeping missions should be adequately funded and well organized to maintain basic civil order, especially in fragile states, making them more flexible and deepening collaboration with regional organizations.

The publication is a joint project of the Körber History Forum and the Körber Emerging Middle Powers Initiative at Körber-Stiftung and Robert Bosch Stiftung, developed in cooperation with: