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View all search resultsFormer ICJ president says world needs another Bandung moment for peace
Former ICJ president Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf says Bandung helped turn principles of self-determination and sovereign equality into international law, and a new coalition of states is needed to defend the rules-based order today.
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A foreign visitor takes a photo on Wednesday, April 15, 2026, of the Asia-Africa Conference gong at the Merdeka Building in Bandung, West Java. Inaugurated in 1980, the Asia-Africa Conference Museum receives 400-500 visitors per day and is expected to see an increase during the 71st anniversary of the Asia- Africa Conference from April 18 to 24. (Antara/Novrian Arbi)
T
he 1955 Asian-African Conference was instrumental in shaping international law that helped free colonized 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 decolonization 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 operationalizing 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.
From Bandung to UN
