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Chapter 1 Human Rights and the Birth of the Third World: The Bandung Conference At Bandung something unexpected happened. The voices of freedom spoke clearly and decisively. —Carlos Peña Romulo, Philippine delegate, 1956 I understand the chief objective of this Conference is to promote neighborly amity and mutual understanding among the peoples of the Asian-African region. . . . This objective tallies exactly with the aim of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights calculated to preserve peace, freedom and justice. It will, I trust, appeal to all men and women who have at their hearts the progress of mankind. —Tasunosuke Takosake, Japanese delegate, address to the opening session of the Asian-African Conference, April 1955 The 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia was a landmark in the emergence of the non-aligned movement and the birth of the Third World.1 Celebrated as a turning point in international affairs, its participants included the six independent states of Africa, along with virtually all of Asia. The meeting at Bandung, which was so vital to the later development of ideas of non-alignment and Afro-Asian solidarity, also served as a key point of origin for the human rights agenda that would be pursued by the decolonized states in the General Assembly. Just as importantly, its proceedings revealed the prevailing attitude toward human rights amongst the leaders of the nascent Third World. Their speeches at Bandung marked out many of the basic contours that came to define key UN human rights battles, such as that on selfdetermination . While the implications of the Asian-African Conference for international relations have been widely acknowledged, little scholarship has been devoted to conference’s significance for human rights. Given the 12417 Decolonization & Evolution of Inter Human Rights.indd 13 12417 Decolonization & Evolution of Inter Human Rights.indd 13 10/19/09 1:49:15 PM 10/19/09 1:49:15 PM 14 Chapter One considerable prominence of human rights at the conference, its virtual absence from most accounts is surprising. Mary Ann Glendon, in her pioneering history of the founding years of the UN human rights regime, has offered a brief, generally negative assessment. Glendon argued that the conference’s significance lay predominantly in its latent anti-Western dimension. The conference “signaled trouble ahead,” despite the affirmation of universality contained in the Final Communiqué.2 Initial opposition to the recognition of the Universal Declaration by the Chinese presaged future struggles over the universality of human rights.3 Unity at Bandung was achieved, in Glendon’s view, “through shared resentment of the dominance of a few rich and powerful countries.”4 This anti-Western “mood” at Bandung very quickly found expression “in characterizations of the Declaration as an instrument of neocolonialism and in attacks on its universality in the name of cultural integrity, selfdetermination of peoples, or national sovereignty.”5 Paul Gordon Lauren, another leading historian on the early foundations of the human rights movement, has presented a more positive interpretation, but has simplified the dynamics of the conference debate .6 According to his account, the conference provided “unparalleled inspiration and self-confidence for Asians and Africans,” an outlet for “pent-up frustrations,” and “release from the psychological chains of presumed inferiority.”7 Its significance was, for Lauren, primarily in its effects on the shape of the international system and the mindset of colonial peoples. In particular, he lauds the recognition of the Universal Declaration by the delegates.8 However, he is too sanguine on the role played by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, and neglects to mention the divide between communist China and the smaller states on the question of human rights. Closer examination of the conference record reveals that Zhou was certainly not among the gallery of Third World heroes Lauren has praised for “advancing the cause of international human rights” at Bandung.9 Contrary to the accounts of both Glendon and Lauren, this chapter argues that the legacy of the Bandung Conference contained a distinctive mixture of both positive and negative possibilities for the evolution of the international human rights project at the UN. It will show that while the human rights objectives of anticolonialism and antiracism, so energetically pursued by the Afro-Asian states in the 1960s and 1970s, were indeed established as priority concerns at Bandung, they coexisted with a more general concern for civil and political rights, one that extended to situations all over the world. Anticolonialism was in part conceived of as a struggle for human rights, the two concepts...

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