"The Compelling Dialogue of Freedom": Human Rights at the

Bandung Conference
Burke, Roland.

Human Rights Quarterly, Volume 28, Number 4, November 2006, pp.

947-965 (Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: 10.1353/hrq.2006.0041

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hrq/summary/v028/28.4burke.html

Access Provided by CNRS BiblioSHS at 12/15/12 2:25PM GMT

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

The Compelling Dialogue of Freedom:

Human Rights at the Bandung
Conference
Roland Burke*
Abstract
This article explores the place of human rights at the 1955 Asian-African
Conference in Bandung, a meeting that founded the Third World as a political entity. Contrary to most existing accounts of the conference, which
emphasize the anti-colonialism and latent anti-Westernism of the participants, it will argue that there was a significant positive engagement with
human rights by a range of newly decolonized states. When recognition of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was challenged by Communist
China, that document found enthusiastic champions at the conference, including Charles Malik, one of the major figures involved in its creation.
At Bandung something unexpected happened. The voices of freedom spoke clearly
and decisively.
Carlos Pena Romulo, Philippine delegate, 1956.1

* Roland Burke is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of Melbourne. His thesis examines the impact of decolonization on the international human rights
project between 1950 and 1979. His work is based on original research from the Personal
Papers of Charles Malik, as well as other documentary sources from foreign service archives
in Australia, the United States, and United Kingdom.

The author would like to thank Dr. Robert Horvath, University of Melbourne, and Professor Richard A. Wilson, Director of the Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut,
for their comments on earlier versions of this article. He is also grateful to Professor Mary
Ann Glendon, Harvard Law School, Dr. Habib C. Malik, Professor Susan Waltz, University
of Michigan, Associate Professor Antonia Finnane, University of Melbourne, and Dr. Christopher Waters, Deakin University, for their assistance and encouragement in this research.
1. Carlos P. Romulo, The Meaning of Bandung 54 (1956). For commentary on this source and
its problems, see George McT. Kahin, The Meaning of Bandung, 312 Annals Am. Acad.
Pol. & Soc. Sci. 141, 142 (1957)(book review). Romulo reflects further on Bandung in
Carlos P. Romulo, Forty Years: A Third World Soldier at the UN 13746 (1986).
Human Rights Quarterly 28 (2006) 947965 2006 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

948

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Vol. 28

I. Introduction
In this article the author examines the place of human rights at the founding
moment of the Third World as a political entity at the 1955 Asian-African
Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. Contrary to much of the current scholarship, which either denigrates or ignores this aspect of the conference, the
author argues that there was a clear commitment to human rights among
the delegates at Bandung. The conference did not mark the genesis of
Third World hostility to human rights. Instead, it was an expression of the
considerable sympathy the African and Asian states had for human rights
in the early post-colonial period.
The Bandung Conference was one of the most significant events in the
emergence of an independent Third World. For the first time, the free states
of Asia and Africa assembled to discuss common problems and attempted
to formulate a united approach to international relations. It was a milestone
in the decolonization process that reshaped both Asia and Africa, a process that would ultimately produce an almost unprecedented revolution in
international relations. Leopold Senghor, former Prime Minister of Senegal,
extolled the conference as the most historic event in the past five centuries.
Since the age of the Renaissance, Senghor wrote, no event has ever been
of such historic significance.2
Bandung collected most of the leading anti-colonial politicians of the era,
men who became iconic figures in many countries across Asia and Africa.
Traditional accounts have emphasized the contributions made by these anticolonial voices, who were indisputably some of the most influential in the
conference proceedings. Zhou Enlai, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Jawaharlal Nehru,
and Ahmed Sukarno are all accorded prominent places in the pantheon of
Third World heroes that gathered at Bandung to denounce colonialism and
foster Afro-Asian solidarity.
As the foundational moment of the Third World, Bandung was almost
immediately accorded special significance among Afro-Asian leaders from
across the ideological spectrum. Neutralists, like Nehru, Nasser, and Sukarno,
were enthusiastic about the emergence of a new, non-aligned bloc, and
mythologized the conference as the birthplace of Afro-Asian non-alignment.
Zhou Enlai saw it as an opportunity to win allies in Asia and Africa, and
exploited the legacy of Bandung when courting newly independent states
in his 1963 African tour. Those states allied to the West left the conference
declaring it a triumph for freedom and democracy in the Third World.

2. Extract from Les nationalismes doutre-mer et lavenir des peuples de couleur, Encyclopdie franaise, pt. II, Section C, Chapter 11, 1959 reprinted in Philippe Braillard &
Mohammad-Reza Djalili, The Third World and International Relations 57 (1986).

2006

Human Rights at the Bandung Conference

949

The legacy of the conference was encapsulated in the phrase the Spirit
of Bandung, an idea that dominated the political rhetoric of a generation
of Third World leaders. When Nasser announced the nationalization of the
Suez Canal, he did so in the name of Bandung. Less dramatically, Nehru
cited Bandung and its principles with metronomic regularity in almost every
foreign policy pronouncement he made until the end of the decade. Even
today, politicians across Africa and Asia invoke the myth of Bandung. It has
become central to the very idea of the Third World.
II. Bandung and Human Rights: Current Scholarship
In Bandung historiography, few studies devote much attention to those
aspects of the conference outside the categories of colonialism, the politics
of Afro-Asian solidarity, and the evolution of non-aligned movement.3 The
question of human rights, which constituted one of the seven main articles
of the conference Final Communiqu, has been virtually absent from scholarship on Bandung.
Specialized historical studies of the human rights movement also tend
to ignore the Bandung Conference. Mary Ann Glendon, one of the few
scholars to discuss human rights at Bandung, argued that the conferences
significance lay predominantly in its latent anti-Western dimension.4 According to Glendon, the conference signaled trouble ahead for universal
human rights.5 The solidarity at Bandung was arrived at through shared
resentment of the dominance of a few rich and powerful countries.6 This
anti-Western mood at Bandung soon translated into characterizations
of the [Universal] Declaration as an instrument of neocolonialism and in
attacks on its universality in the name of cultural integrity, self-determination of peoples, or national sovereignty.7 For Glendon, Bandung began the

3. Two accounts of the history of Afro-Asian unity that offer detailed examination of Bandung
and its legacy have been produced, see G.H. Jansen, Afro-Asia and Non-Alignment (1966);
David Kimche, The Afro-Asian Movement: Ideology and Foreign Policy of the Third World
(1973). The only detailed documentary study of Bandung to date is George McTurnan
Kahin, The Asian-African Conference: Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955 (1956).
4. Paul Gordon Lauren, another specialist historian on the development of international
human rights, is one of the few scholars to devote significant positive attention to
Bandung. In his two texts, Lauren provides a brief discussion of the place of human
rights at the conference and its implications, see Paul Gordon Lauren, The Evolution of
International Human Rights: Visions Seen 241 (2nd ed. 2003) and, to a lesser extent, Paul
Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination
22329 (2d ed. 1996).
5. Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New : Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights 215 (2001).
6. Id. at 223.
7. Id. at 224.

950

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Vol. 28

steady decline in respect for the human rights embodied in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and [b]efore long, a potent mixture
of resentment and political expediency would fuel a Third World critique
of the whole Declaration as Western.8 In this assessment, Bandung was
the point of origin for some of the most potent critiques of the human rights
concept, albeit only in embryonic form.9
That Glendon has taken this position on Bandung is somewhat surprising.
In her outstanding history of the making of the UDHR, she made a compelling case for the intimate involvement of Third World voices in the founding
years of the human rights program at the UN. Two of the figures celebrated
in that work, Charles Malik and Carlos Romulo, also played an important
role at Bandung, an avenue of research Glendon does not explore.
This paper challenges the negative presumptions about the conference
and its relationship to human rights. Contrary to Glendons assertion, I argue
that there was a serious positive engagement with human rights questions
among the Afro-Asian states assembled in Bandung. In my discussion, I
demonstrate four main points. First, human rights formed an integral part of
the political vocabulary at Bandung, and were one of the foremost topics of
debate. Second, there was a significant level of continuity between human
rights debates at Bandung and the debates over the UDHR at the UN. Third,
the question of colonialism, the defining issue of the conference, was in many
respects a question about human rights. Finally, the two major challenges
to human rights in non-Western states, authoritarian developmentalism and
cultural relativism, were not yet apparent at Bandung in any meaningful
sense. Rather than inaugurating the age of radical Third Worldist hostility
towards rights, the conference came at a point when many Afro-Asian states
were some of the most outspoken advocates of universal human rights, even
if their domestic practices often fell short of their international rhetoric.
III. Human Rights: Bandungs Forgotten Debate
Even before the Conference began, human rights were highlighted as a
central issue for discussion. The appeal came from an Egyptian senator,
Mahmoud Aboul Fath. During the early 1950s, Fath had been one of Nassers

8. Id. at 216. Glendons analysis of the fate of the human rights program is essentially
correct, but in locating the beginning of these trends at Bandung, she perhaps underestimates the level of support human rights attracted at the conference.
9. Glendons pessimism is not altogether unwarranted. Charles Maliks private appraisal
of the conference is generally quite negative, and he repeatedly laments the incipient
anti-democratic tendency that seems to be developing across the decolonized world.
Nevertheless, this concern seems much more focused on potential problems emerging in
the next decade, rather than a critique of the human rights attitudes at Bandung itself.

2006

Human Rights at the Bandung Conference

951

close allies, serving as a propagandist and speech-writer for the new leader.
His newspaper, Al-Misri, was a key organ for disseminating the nationalist
rhetoric of the new Republican government. Although, as the authoritarian
tendencies of the regime became increasingly apparent, Fath became a vocal critic of Nasser and his emerging dictatorship. Al-Misri was promptly
suppressed, and Fath fled into exile.10
In his letter to the Bandung delegates, Fath exhorted the conference not
to ignore human rights in the clamor to condemn colonialism:
How can you ask colonialist and imperialist countries to put an end to the ruthless methods they employ in Africa and Asia, to restore freedoms and human
rights to peoples under their influence when some of you treat their [your] own
peoples in a worse way? Such a call will sound weak and lack some sincerity
unless your courage will know no bounds or limits when conditions in countries
represented in your own congress are concerned. . . . The violation of human
rights is certainly bad and intolerable when committed by imperialists against
peoples on whom they force their authority but it is also worse and more obnoxious [when] committed by a few nationals against their own people.11

The extent to which the conference truly lived up to Faths ambitious standard
is open to debate. There were undoubtedly severe human rights problems
in all the countries represented at Bandung. However, this depressing reality
co-existed with a genuine enthusiasm for the idea of human rights, which
many of the new nationalist leaders were committed to, even if the practices
of most were not yet consistent with the rhetoric.
Interest in human rights was a distinctive feature of the intensely optimistic atmosphere that characterized much of the immediate post-colonial
moment. Human rights were among the most popular issues in speeches to
the conference, with only the related but more immediate preoccupations
of racism and colonialism featuring more prominently. Of the twenty-five
nations who gave addresses in the opening session on 1819 April, no less
than eleven invoked human rights.12 Those speeches came from a remarkably diverse collection of states, and encompassed the full range of political
systems in attendance. The speakers ranged from His Royal Highness, Foreign
Minister Sardar Mohammed Naim of Afghanistan, an absolute monarchy, to
Prime Minister Zhou Enlai of Communist China, and included such ideo-

10. For a prcis of Faths experiences with Nasser, see Patrick Seale, LAffaire Nasser, 39
Intl Aff. 124, 12425 (1963).
11. Mahmoud Aboul Fath, Letter to Bandung Delegates (13 Apr. 1955). (The Personal Papers
of Charles Malik, Box 130, Folder 7, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress,
Wash. D.C.)
12. Some delegations chose to distribute their opening addresses as printed texts in lieu of
a speech to permit more time for the substantive program.

952

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Vol. 28

logically disparate states as Egypt, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Lebanon, Thailand,

Turkey, South Vietnam, and Yemen.13
During the closing session, human rights were again a prominent feature,
and four delegations nominated its recognition as one of the achievements
of the conference. Afghan delegate Naim praised the conference for proving
that all of us, from different parts of Asia and Africa, have felt and acted
as one, for the achievement of our common desire . . . [the] protection of
human rights.14 Nasser of Egypt endorsed it as a tremendous success, not
least because of the deep concern and full support which all the Asiatic and
African countries have shown with regard to questions of human rights.15
His sentiments were echoed by Prime Minister Mohammed Ali, head of the
Pakistani delegation, who extolled human rights as one of the core beliefs
that defined the Asian-African attitude toward world affairs, and pronounced
that among other things, the peoples of Asia and Africa . . . stand for the
fundamental principles of Human Rights and Self-determination.16
The universal character of human rights received strong affirmation at
the Afro-Asian meeting. Support for universality was apparent early on, with
several speakers invoking both the UDHR and the Draft Covenant on Human
Rights in the opening session.17 Prince Wan of Thailand even offered a brief
philosophical digression on the common nature of rights, and asserted that
Buddhism, Islam and Christianity all teach the same lessonthe dignity and
worth of man, faith in fundamental human rights, and respect for fundamental
freedom for all without distinction as to creed, colour or race.18
The enthusiasm many Third World delegates had for human rights
was demonstrated in the most emphatic fashion at the first opportunity for
proper political discussion. Twelve hours were spent debating human rights
during the first meeting of the closed sessions of the Political Committee
on Wednesday, 20 April. In two sessions, both held in the Dwi-Warne
Building, the Heads of Delegations engaged in a long discussion on the
inclusion of human rights, one that started at 9:00 a.m. and concluded,
with a compromise, at 10:00 p.m.19 This represented almost a quarter of

13. Fuad Hassan, Collected Documents From the Asian-African Conference: April 1824, 1955
(1983). All opening and closing addresses verified by cross-reference to original conference record Asian-African Conference, Bandung, Indonesia, 18th 24th April 1955: Speeches
and Communiqus, (Jakarta, Ministry of Information, Republic of Indonesia, May 1955). Contemporary photo. reprint, copy supplied by Merle C. Ricklefs, University of Melbourne.
14. Closing Address of Afghanistan, supra note 13, at 149.
15. Closing Address of Egypt, supra note 13, at 154.
16. Closing Address of Pakistan, supra note 13, at 173.
17. See Hassan, opening speeches from Egypt, Iran, and Japan, supra note 13, at 50, 59,
67.
18. Opening Address of Thailand, supra note 13, at 109.
19. Drawn from Press Release, Conference Secretariat, see Asian-African Conference: Speeches
and Communiqus, supra note 13.

2006

Human Rights at the Bandung Conference

953

the time allocated for the serious work of the conference. Over the course
of Wednesdays deliberations, the commitment to human rights among the
delegates would become increasingly evident.
Early in the first session of the Political Committee, Malik put a proposal
forward for the conference to recognize the UDHR. This initiative won backing from Sri Lanka, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey, and South
Vietnam. It was opposed by China, India, Indonesia, and North Vietnam.20
Most vocal and stubborn of those opposed to the acceptance of the UDHR
was Communist China. While all agreed in principle that the conference
should endorse human rights in some form, the specifics of this question
were bitterly contested, with Zhou reluctant to offer any affirmation of the
UDHR, as he had not been represented in its drafting.
In many ways, this debate on the UDHR at Bandung was an extension of
the debates that occurred at the UN in the late 1940s. Although the UDHR
was successfully passed on 10 December 1948, its status as the definitive
human rights instrument was not yet assured. Only fifty-eight states were
members of the UN at the time of that vote.21 Over a third of the states
represented at Bandung were not involved in the adoption of the UDHR,
as they were yet to be admitted to the organization, and in many cases,
were still to win their independence.22 With every new state that appeared,
there was the need to explain the UDHR and persuade them of its virtue.23
As the Chinese objections demonstrated, the Universal Declaration was not
self-evidently universal for those who had not participated in its creation.
The battles of 1948 had to be re-fought, at least on some level, with every
new state that entered the organization. Part of this process of persuasion
was played out at Bandung, where Malik and Romulo, the same figures
that had championed the Declaration in the UN, led the push for human
rights. According to Malik, Bandung operated as a small United Nations, a
United Nations in miniature . . . meeting together and deliberating in matters and by ways that were almost identical with the methods and ways of
the United Nations.24

20. Jansen, supra note 3, at 198.

21. Chronology of UN membership, available at http://www.un.org/Overview/growth.
htm.
22. Communist China, Indonesia, Ghana, Cambodia, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Sri Lanka,
and Sudan.
23. A copy of the UDHR is among the extensive handwritten notes, minutes and appointment
cards copy in Maliks Bandung Conference folder. It seems reasonable to speculate that
it was used to explain the content of the UDHR to those unfamiliar with it, though no
direct evidence exists in the papers to prove this. See The Personal Papers of Charles
Malik, Box 130, Folder 4, supra note 11.
24. Charles Malik, American Broadcast Corporation (ABC) Sunday Radio Program Transcript:
Guest of Honour Charles Malik (5 May 1955). (Australian National Archives (NAA),
A1838/278. 3002/1 Pr 5 at 2.)

954

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Vol. 28

At this United Nations in miniature, Malik in particular defended

the UDHR and had to convince the other representatives to endorse the
set of human rights articulated, rather than re-opening the entire question
and working out their own catalogue of freedoms, which was raised as a
potential alternative early in Wednesdays meeting.25 Acting as the chief
advocate for the UDHR, Malik explained what the document entailed to
those unfamiliar with it:
The problem of Human Rights was raised and we spent practically the whole
of Wednesday talking about whether the conference should affirm or endorse
the Declaration of Human Rights and I had to defend that point of view; and
I was asked again and again by members of the conference to tell them about
the Declaration, having had something to do with it myselfwhich I did.26

In the era of rapid decolonization, the successful passage of UDHR in 1948

meant little unless it was supplemented by this kind of advocacy. Malik,
who was so central to the politics of the UDHRs adoption by the UN Third
Committee, played a vital role in the politics of the UDHR at Bandung.
The presence of two communist states, China and North Vietnam, also
ensured that the battle between those who gave priority to civil and political rights, and those who favored economic and social rights, was again
rehearsed, this time among the delegates of the decolonized states. According to Maliks account of the debate, the question of economic and social
rights was a main point of contention between the communists and many
of the other representatives:
[O]ne of the basic issues on which we were sharply divided . . . was the question of Human Rights. What are the ultimate fundamental Human Rights? For
the Communists these rights are for the most part the social and economic
rights; but for some of the rest of us the ultimate human rights that should now
be guaranteed by the world and by the diverse nations are the personal, legal,
political rights to freedomto freedom of thought, to freedom of expression,
and certainly of free elections. So on this issue too, of the concept of human
rights, we were sharply divided.27

During the drafting of the UDHR at the UN, the issue of economic and
social rights had been the source of some controversy between the communist

25. Roderick W. Parkes, Communiqu: Some Impressions of the Bandung Conference, Jakarta:
British Foreign Office (28 Apr. 1955). (British Public Records Office, FO371/116983, 40,
1071/242/55, D2231/319, at 2.); Djalal Abdoh, Communiqu: The Bandung Conference. An Appreciation, Tehran: British Foreign Office (3 May 1955). (FO 371/116984,
1071/55/55, D2231/336, at 1.)
26. Charles Malik, Talk Given by Dr. Charles Malik at Luncheon, Canberra: Department of
External Affairs Australia (28 Apr. 1955). (File No. 156/3/3, A1838/278, 3002/1 Pr 5 at
2.)
27. Malik, supra note 24.

2006

Human Rights at the Bandung Conference

955

bloc and the Western powers, though it was probably the influence of the
Latin American states that did the most to ensure the recognition of these
rights.28 The finished text included a significant number of economic and
social provisions, but incorporated them into an interdependent whole which,
at least according to the intentions of its authors, could not be fragmented
or divided. Given the severe underdevelopment that plagued almost all of
the countries at Bandung, the apparent failure of the communist states to put
an emphasis on economic and social rights is significant, and a testament to
the balance and appeal of the formulation put forward in the UDHR.
However, the chief source of division in the debate was not found
primarily in the content of the UDHR, but in Zhous opposition to it as a
text produced by a body at which his country was not represented. In his
discussion of the human rights debate, Romulo reported the nature of Zhous
objection to the UDHR:
Chou En-Lai [Zhou Enlai] had originally signified objection to any conference
statement predicated on a United Nations precept, principle, or position, declaring that since the Peoples Republic of China was not a member of the United
Nations, and therefore had no opportunity to participate in the formulation of
such United Nations statement or policies, his country could not be expected
to attach its name to any conference statement tied to the United Nations.29

Maliks perception was similar, and he understood the Chinese obstructionism as an attempt to use every action to impress upon us the fact that
they were not present in the United Nations, that therefore they could not be
responsible for the decisions of the United Nations.30 Accounts from foreign
observers at the conference also describe the Chinese protest as essentially
generic; it was directed not so much at the UDHR, but more at drawing
attention to their exclusion from the UN. Although Glendon nominated
Zhous opposition as being of special significance, its importance should
not be overstated. As unofficial Australian observer Keith Shann remarked,
it may be assumed that wherever reference to the United Nations occurs
these difficulties were also present.31

28. See Johannes Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting and
Intent (1999); Mary Ann Glendon, The Forgotten Crucible: The Latin American Influence
on the Universal Human Rights Idea, 16 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 27, 2740 (2003). The division over economic and social rights can be overstatedclearly many Western states
did have considerable sympathy for the concept, and the conflict on this question was
relatively modest during the drafting of the UDHR.
29. Romulo, supra note 1, at 14.
30. Malik, supra note 26.
31. Keith C.O. Shann, Report on Asian-African Conference Bandung, Canberra: Department of External Affairs, United Nations Branch, Australia (11 May 1955); (NAA A4311/1,
Item 94/28, at 5.)

956

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Vol. 28

The question was resolved through the formation of a sub-committee,

which ultimately saw Zhou retreat and recognize the UDHR, although the
language was moderated to an extent.
In the smaller committee, the Chinese were scared of the text and we gave
[them] three hours to read it. Mr. Chou En-lai [Zhou Enlai] read it. I had said it
took us three years to work it out. He said you cannot expect me to digest it in
three hours. Finallyagaincompromise has happened in all these gatherings.
We said Take note of.32

Carlos Romulo attributed the Chinese concession to the strong, spontaneous support in the conference for the document and its principles.33 Far
from a compromise solution, Romulo understood the Final Communiqu
as a document that fully supported the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.34 Djalal Abdoh, acting head of the Iranian delegation, thought the
agreed resolution a very simple one expressing the Conferences support
of the United Nations Declaration of Fundamental Human Rights.35 By the
accounts of these figures at least, there was a solid, positive engagement
with the UDHR at the Bandung Conference, with the majority of the nations
present willing to insist on its inclusion in the Final Communiqu, despite
objections from the most powerful nation in attendance.
Analysis of the consensus human rights paragraph reveals a modest
but significant success for the proponents of human rights. Opening with
a superfluous statement of support for the UN Charter, the Communique
text concludes with a clear acknowledgment of the UDHR as a universal
standard:
The Asian-African Conference declared its full support of the fundamental principles of Human Rights as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations and
took note of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard
of achievement for all peoples and all nations.36

Although considerably weaker than the unequivocal affirmation sought by

Malik, the final clause reproduces one of the most important phrases from
the UDHR.37 This inclusion strengthens the overall text substantially, edging
it toward the positive endorsement that the Chinese delegation had rejected.
We managed at the end to add the phrase which was very satisfactory,

32.
33.
34.
35.
36.

Malik, supra note 26.

Romulo, supra note 1, at 14.
Id.
Abdoh, supra note 25, at 1.
Final Communiqu of the Asian-African Conference 24 Apr. 1955, supra note 3, at
80.
37. See Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 10 Dec. 1948, G.A. Res. 217A
(III), U.N. GAOR, 3d Sess. (Resolutions, pt. 1), at 71, U.N. Doc. A/810 (1948), reprinted
in 43 Am. J. Intl L. 127 (Supp. 1949).

2006

Human Rights at the Bandung Conference

957

noted Malik, who hoped that the Chinese knew what they were doing
when they accepted it.38
Zhous refusal to agree to a phrase indicating full support reflected his
recognition of the Universal Declaration as an important and potentially
threatening document. According to Malik, the Chinese considered the
human rights question a serious one, and their lack of familiarity with the
Declaration made them cautious about offering a full affirmation of a document they themselves acknowledged as highly significant: [H]ere we had
an important textwhich was illustrated in their announcementsthat they
could not possibly fairly be expected to endorse it and the utmost they could
say was that we took note of it.39
Recognition of the UDHR in the conferences Final Communiqu was
an important victory for the proponents of human rights. Despite the compromise language that was agreed upon, the fact that Zhou was forced to
withdraw from his original position testifies to the strength of support for
human rights among the smaller states. One of his major objectives at the
conference was to win support from the newly decolonized states. Recognizing the attachment the delegates from these states had to human rights,
he made a hasty, tactical retreat. Had the dominant sentiment at Bandung
been one of hostility toward human rights, then Zhou, an astute diplomat,
would have faced few difficulties in excising the reference to the UDHR.
Indeed, as his was not the only country absent from the drafting procedure,
such an issue could have been exploited to the advantage of the communist state, and portrayed as a motif for the wider exclusion of Asian and
African peoples from the machinery of international relations. His retreat
indicated that there was, quite simply, no advantage to be won by opposing
human rights at Bandung. That he later nominated his maneuvering on the
UDHR as a mistake, and even apologized for his initial stance, reinforces
this point.40
IV. Defining Freedom: Colonialism, Communism, and
Indigenous Despotism
Human rights also constituted a major dimension in what was perhaps
the most spectacular debate of the conference: the debate on colonialism.
38. Malik, supra note 26.
39. Id.
40. Record of interview between Charles Malik of Lebanon and Mr. Chou En-Lai, Prime
Minister of the Peoples Republic of China, (25 Apr. 1955). (Copy of transcript of interview between Chou En-Lai and Charles Malik, 6:308:30pm, Monday, 25 Apr. 1955,
Bandung, Indonesia. Transcript is a carbon copy of that presented to John Forster Dulles,
5 May 1955, sent to Chou En-Lai, 6 May 1955, transmitted through Swedish Ambassador. Personal Papers of Charles Malik, Manuscript Reading Room, supra note 11.)

958

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Vol. 28

Questions about the nature of freedom, and the relationship between national self-determination and individual liberty, emerged from the competing definitions of colonialism. Such issues were the subject of considerable
controversy from the first day of the conference on 18 April, with tensions
escalating dramatically during the afternoon of 21 April, when Sri Lankan
Prime Minister John Kotelawala assailed the double-standard on the colonialism of the Soviet Union.41 Irritated by what he perceived as excessive focus
on Western imperialism, Kotelawala urged the conference to condemn Soviet
colonialism as well, provoking a wide-ranging and bitter debate.42
While primarily concerned with foreign domination, the colonialism
dispute raised arguments with important consequences for human rights and
democracy. By articulating what constituted colonialism, those at Bandung
were forced to examine the political and social systems they sought for
themselves. They were made to question what precisely was at stake in the
campaign against colonialism.
Nehru, eager to see the conference conclude successfully, was quick to
recognize the powerful implications of this approach to colonialism. In his
response to Kotelawala on the morning of 22 April, he urged the delegates
to limit their formulation of colonialism to traditional situations, as a broader
conception would necessarily entail very awkward questions.
If we look at this question in its entirety . . . and if we examine the state of
freedom, the state of individual or national freedom, the state of democratic
liberty or democracy itself in the countries represented here, well, I feel many
of us are lacking, terribly lacking. . . . If we sit down and discuss these matters
in all integrity in its entirety then we shall have to go very far and discuss how
far countries represented here fulfil that noble standard which we laid down
yesterday in the human rights or even the ordinary tenets of democracy and
freedom.43

Defining colonialism was a perilous task.

Malik encapsulated the key point of contention raised by the colonialism debate. Speaking shortly after the conference to Australian diplomats,
he argued that the most significant division at Bandung was over the nature
of freedom itself:
[T]here was no question on which points of view were more sharply and more
poignantly divided than on this problem of freedom. Because to the Communists, in the present context of this Conference [liberation] meant the liberation

41. See John Kotelawala, An Asian Prime Ministers Story 18687 (1956).
42. Id.; Jansen, supra note 3, at 20207, 21415; Kahin, supra note 3, at 1821, 3031;
Kimche, supra note 3, at 6870.
43. Jawaharlal Nehru, Problems of Dependent Peoples, address to the closed session of
the Political Committee, 22 Apr. 1955 (File SI/162/9/64-MEA) in 29 New Delhi, Selected
Works of Jawaharlal Nehru 103 (2d ser. 1984).

2006

Human Rights at the Bandung Conference

959

of the various nations and peoples of Asia and Africa from foreign Western
rule. But to some of uswhile this certainly belongs to the notion of freedom,
freedom was much larger and much deeper than mere liberation from foreign
rule. To us freedom meant freedom of mind, freedom of thought, freedom of
press, freedom to criticise, to judge for yourselffreedom, in short, to be the
full human being.44

Even before Kotelawalas dramatic speech, which would precipitate

the most acrimonious phase of the debate over communist colonialism,
Carlos Romulo had invited the participants to ponder the relationship between freedom, individual rights, and anti-colonialism. For Romulo, the
chief issue was individual freedom, and colonialism was an evil because it
always curtailed the rights of those living under it. But there were systems,
like communism, that were still more repressive than colonialism. As Romulo pointed out, freedom of speech under the US colonial regime in the
Philippines, or under the British in India, was, for example, far superior to
that which existed in communist countries. Eradicating colonialism was a
necessary, but not sufficient, condition for freedom.
National self-determination and individual human rights were the two
goals Romulo fought for his entire life, and he was uniquely placed among
the delegates as one of the foremost champions of both causes at the international level. At the San Francisco Conference, he successfully agitated
for the inclusion of provisions for colonial self-determination in the UN
Charter, against the wishes of many of the established European powers.45
In the field of human rights, he was one of the few Third World voices in
the drafting of the UDHR.
With this impeccable anti-colonial and human rights credentials, Romulo
spoke with authority when he addressed the relationship between freedom
and independence. He warned of the dangers of national independence,
which could degenerate into an instrument for a new and different kind
of subjection.46 Freedom was not won merely by casting-off of alien rule.
Anti-colonialism should not seek the transposition of an indigenous ruling
elite for a foreign one, but a complete democratic reformation of the repressive colonial state:
[I]s political freedom achieved when the national banner rises over the seat of
government, the foreign ruler goes, and the power passes into the hands of our
own leaders? Is the struggle for national independence the struggle to substitute
a local oligarchy for the foreign oligarchy? Or is it just the beginning of the
conquest of real freedom by the people of the land? Is there political freedom
where only one political party may rule? Is there political freedom where dissent

44. Malik, supra note 24.

45. Romulo, supra note 1, at 3345.
46. See Romulo, supra note 1, at 66.

960

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Vol. 28

from the policy of the government means imprisonment or worse? It strikes me

that autocratic rule, control of the press, and the police state are exactly the
worst features of some colonialist systems against which we have fought all our
lives and against which so many of us are still fighting. Is this really the model
of the freedom we seek? Or is it the free interplay of contending parties, the
open competition of ideas and political views in the market place, the freedom
of a man to speak up as he chooses, be he right or wrong?47

He acknowledged that there were many possible answers to these

questions, but argued that the best answer, and the one selected by the
Philippines, was a pluralistic, democratic state.48 Philippine independence
was a means for ensuring the rights of all citizens, not an end of itself, argued
Romulo, and he pledged to construct a society in which the freedom of our
Republic will truly become the freedom of every one of its citizens.49
The controversy over Soviet imperialism raised other more general critiques over the nature of the communist authoritarian development model,
a model that would be embraced by many Third World regimes in the
1960s and 1970s. For countries that were extremely poor, the question of
whether to pursue economic development at the expense of human rights
had obvious and immediate relevance. At Bandung, however, the tendencies of the 1960s and 1970s were not yet discernible. The only champions
of an authoritarian development model were the two communist states,
China and North Vietnam, and even they made no mention of it in their
respective addresses.
This silence on the part of the communists did not prevent Romulo from
launching a powerful critique of the authoritarian strategy of modernization, which brought development at the expense of personal liberty. His
criticisms were not, however, simply a manifestation of anti-communism.
Romulo had previously castigated the Philippine colonial administration of
General Wood for denying the peoples freedom through the justification
of superior material well-being. Better a dinner of herbs in freedom, than
caviar under a crown, Romulo argued.50
For the states at Bandung, the example offered by the Soviet Union,
and to a lesser extent China, presented itself as a potential solution to the
pressing imperative of industrialization. Romulo addressed the communist
program of economic modernization, which promised to bring the material improvements so desperately sought by the countries emerging from
colonialism by instituting a one-party police state:

47.
48.
49.
50.

Id. at 67.
Id.
Id. at 68.
Carlos P. Romulo, I Walked With Heroes 164 (1961).

2006

Human Rights at the Bandung Conference

961

[Communism claims to achieve] total change through total power, through

avowed dictatorship and the forcible manipulation of men and means to achieve
certain ends, the rigid control of all thought and expression, the ruthless suppression of all opposition, the pervasive control of human life in all spheres by
a single, tightly run, self-selected organization of elite individuals.51

Communist justifications, much like the colonial ones that came before,
could not justify the ground truth of this system, and that all the elaborate
series of phrases and rationalization produced for such dictatorships would
be unable to hide the realities of authoritarian rule.52
He dismissed the trade-off between individual freedom and economic
progress as an uncertain and greatly disproportionate exchange. A new excuse
for dictatorship had not the object of the independence struggle:
Does the road to greater freedom really lie through an indefinite period of less
freedom? Is it for this that we have in this generation raised our heads and
taken up the struggle against foreign tyrannies? Has all the sacrifice, struggle,
and devotion, all been, then, for the purpose of replacing foreign tyranny by
domestic tyranny? Do we fight to regain our manhood from Western colonial
rulers only to surrender it to rulers among ourselves who seize the power to keep
us enslaved? Is it true, can it be true, in this vastly developed 20th century, that
national progress must be paid for with the individual well-being and freedom of
millions of people? Can we really believe that this price will, in some dim and
undefined future time, be redeemed by the well-being and freedom of the yet
unborn? . . . This road is open before many of us. The gateway to it is strewn
with sweet-smelling garlands of phrases and promises and high sentiment. But
once you march through it, the gate clangs behind you. The policeman becomes
master and your duty thereafter is forever to say aye.53

According to Romulo, the peoples of the colonial Africa and Asia, who
had struggled for so long against foreign authoritarianism, had not succeeded
only to re-impose upon themselves another dictatorial regime, whatever its
philosophical justification.
V. Conclusions
Bandung came at a moment when African and Asian countries were among
the strongest supporters of the international human rights project. At the
United Nations, the 1950s marked a highpoint in Third World enthusiasm
for human rights. Commenting on the 1955 session of the Human Rights
Commission, John Humphrey, the first director of the UN Human Rights
51. Romulo, supra note 1, at 75.
52. Id.
53. Id. at 7576.

962

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Vol. 28

division and one of the principal architects of the UDHR, would remark
[t]he delegations with the strongest positive convictions were now without
any doubt those which represented the Third World.54
Far from being opposed to the rights discourse as a neo-colonial imposition, the sort of nationalism embraced by many African and Asian independence leaders had important affinities with human rights. In nationalist
manifestos of the period, such as the 1955 ANC Freedom Charter, human
rights occupied a central place.55 Part of colonial struggle for freedom was
a campaign for the extension of the individual rights that were considered
the preserve of Europeans. Jordanian Foreign Minister Sayyed Wahid Salah
lamented the monopoly the established powers had on human rights,
while they were denied to the small states of the world.56 Other delegates,
like Yemeni Prime Minister Emir Seif El Islam Al Hassan, expressed disappointment that colonialism continued despite the adoption of human rights
standards by the UN.57 While self-determination was the primary object of
the anti-colonial campaign, respect for individual rights, which had been
so trampled by colonial administrations, served as an important justification
and motivation for Afro-Asian nationalism.
The cultural relativist challenge to human rights first emerged not from
the Third World states, but from the established Western democracies. In the
debates on the human rights covenants in the early 1950s, delegates from
Britain, France, and Belgium argued for a special clause exempting colonial
territories from their application.58 They justified this clause by a feigned
reverence for cultural difference. Rene Cassin, one of the most influential
figures in the drafting of the UDHR, was a prominent exponent of the case
for a level of relativism in applying human rights in the Third World.59 He
asserted that human rights might endanger public order among backward
colonial populations, and subject different peoples to uniform obligations.60
The Belgian representative phrased a similar set of arguments in much more
offensive terms. Human rights were for advanced, civilized people, not those
in African and Asian colonies.61 Such arguments would not have seemed out
of place at a summit of African or Asian leaders in the early 1990s.

54. John P. Humphrey, Human Rights & the United Nations : A Great Adventure 203 (1984).
55. ANC Freedom Charter June 26 1955, available at http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/charter.html.
56. See Hassan, supra note 13, at 70.
57. Id. at 132.
58. These debates occurred in the UN Third Committee in October and November 1950.
Consult the summary records for further detail.
59. For Cassins role in the drafting of the UDHR, see Morsink, supra note 28; Glendon,
supra note 5.
60. U.N. GAOR Third Committee, 5th sess. 38, U.N. Doc. A/C.3/SR.294 (1950).
61. U.N. GAOR Third Committee, 5, U.N. Doc. A/C.3/SR.292 (1950).

2006

Human Rights at the Bandung Conference

963

Yet in the 1950s, Third World diplomats at the UN were among the
strongest defenders of universality. Nationalist Chinas representative, PengChun Chang, who along with Cassin had been deeply involved in the
drafting of the Universal Declaration, passionately denounced the cultural
relativist justifications of the colonial powers at the UN.62 Bedia Afnan of
Iraq, wondered how the degree of evolution of a people could prevent it
from enjoying the rights which [Cassin] himself had admitted to be inherent
in human nature.63 In a passionate critique of cultural relativism, Afnan
argued further that differences of culture and tradition were no obstacle
whatever to the universal application of the provisions of the covenant
and that nowadays it could no longer be claimed that some civilizations
were essentially different from others.64 Mr. Azmi Bey, the UN delegate
from Egypt, charged that cultural relativism was only too reminiscent of the
Hitlerian concept which divided mankind into groups of varying worth.65
The force of these statements suggest we must be very cautious in locating
even a nascent challenge to human rights at Bandung. Any such challenge
would certainly have been inconsistent with the dominant viewpoint of
the Afro-Asian states as they expressed it at the UN, even if their domestic
records often fell short of this international rhetoric.
There was also a reflexive personal interest in human rights from the
first wave of Afro-Asian leaders, who had themselves suffered punishment
at the hands of repressive colonial systems. Nehru, who was imprisoned
seven times by the British, had been an early proponent of human rights,
endorsing H.G. Wells Sankey Declaration of Rights in 1940. South African
nationalists Moses Kotane and Joseph Cachalia were at Bandung, though
only after being pursued by secret police from Pretoria.66 Kotane, one of the
first to be banned under the notorious Suppression of Communism Act, used
the language of rights to condemn apartheid in a statement issued at the
conference.67 He was no stranger to human rights, being involved in both
the African Bill of Rights submission to the Atlantic Charter and the drafting
of the Freedom Charter.68 Kenyan nationalist Joseph Murumbi, who would
62. U.N. GAOR Third Committee, 25, U.N. Doc A/C.3/SR.295 (1950).
63. U.N. GAOR Third Committee, 6, U.N. Doc. A/C.3/SR.296 (1950).
64. Id. 81; see also Susan Waltz, Universal Human Rights: The Contribution of Muslim
States, 26 Hum. Rts. Q. 799 (2004), for more detail on the work of Afnan and Azmi Bey
in the drafting of the covenants.
65. U.N. GAOR Third Committee, supra note 63, 169.
66. Brian Bunting, Moses Kotane: South African Revolutionary 20613 (1975).
67. Press Statement by Representatives of the African National Congress and the South
African Indian Congress, 16 Apr. 1955, in The Asian-African Conference: Views and News
3536 (c.1985).
68. See Bunting, supra note 66, at 117; Moses Kotane, Isithwalandiwe Rests in Peace, 12
Sechaba 51, 56 (1978); 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Charter, available at http://www.
sahistory.org.za/pages/specialprojects/june26/graphics/Freedom%20Charter-reduced.
pdf.

964

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Vol. 28

return from Bandung to condemn colonialism on the basis of its violations

of the UDHR, was on the run from the British colonial police state.69
The enthusiasm for human rights among many early Third World leaders
was exemplified by the figures of Romulo and Malik. These two men were
the most influential contributors to the human rights debates at Bandung,
and indeed were some of the most activist in the human rights program.
Coming from countries aligned with the Western powers, there is a temptation to dismiss their advocacy of human rights as a symptom of the Cold
War, a cynical political weapon to wield against communist and non-aligned
opponents. In modern scholarship, commentators often explain away Third
World supporters of human rights as Westernized exceptions, hopelessly
disconnected from their indigenous culture, captivated by an imperialist
ideology.70 These assertions understate the support for human rights evident
among many colonial leaders in the early phase of independence. In some
respects, they are reminiscent of the sort of patronizing mindset that characterized the worst features of imperialism, a mindset that failed to properly
consider the possibility of agency on the part of colonial peoples.
Romulo was fiercely anti-colonial, with an impeccable record of Philippine nationalism. He had suffered racial discrimination at the hands of the
Americans, and had bitter experience of American occupation early in his
life. Yet he was also an enthusiastic participant in the drafting of the UDHR,
and a committed advocate of human rights.71 His example illustrates the
compatibility of anti-colonial nationalism and human rights in the immediate post-independence period.
Similarly, Malik was dedicated to a strong, independent Lebanon, later
serving as foreign minister. During his public life, he sought to maintain
traditional culture while introducing political pluralism. Human rights were
much more than a political weapon for Malik. He too had witnessed their
violation firsthand, during a brief and traumatic period studying philosophy
under Heidegger in Nazi Germany.72 Even the most cursory reading of the
preamble of the Universal Declaration, which he co-drafted, demonstrates
the eloquence with which he articulated the human rights concept. Those
who point to Maliks aligned status would do well to remember his opposition to the creation of Israel, and his position as head spokesperson for
the Arab League.

69. Bethwell A. Ogot, Mau Mau and Nationhood: The Untold Story, in Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority & Narration 8, 2324 (E.S. Atieno Odhiambo & John Lonsdale
eds. 2003).
70. For an example of this strategy, see Makau Mutua, Human Rights: A Political and Cultural
Critique 19 (2002).
71. Though Romulos support for human rights faded dramatically in later decades, a decline
epitomized by his defense of the Marcos regime.
72. Glendon, supra note 5.

2006

Human Rights at the Bandung Conference

965

It is profoundly inconsistent to accept the supposed authenticity of the

imported discourses of Marxism and nationalism without question, while
simultaneously repudiating the legitimacy of human rights. If the assumption
that an ideologys provenance determines its legitimacy is accepted, then
the application of the ideas of Fichte, Marx, and Lenin outside their native
regions must also be questioned. Romulo himself was deeply contemptuous
of such reasoning, and attacked those, both colonial and communist alike,
who claimed that Asian and African people could only speak of freedom
as tape recordings from Washington or London.73 Freedom and democracy were not limited by geography, and were much more than an empty
expression of Cold War politics:
Democracy had its day in court at Bandung and emerged with flying colors.
It was upheld by most of the delegates, because the peoples they represented
had cast their lot with freedom. They did not take that position because they
were pro-American or pro-West. In fact, they are placed on the defensive in
their respective countries when they are referred to by the American press as
pro-American or pro-West. That the position of these delegates happens to be
that of the United States or of most of the Western countries is only because the
ideals of freedom as enshrined in the Magna Charta of England, the Declaration
of the Rights of Man by France, the Declaration of Independence of the United
States, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are universal.74

It is insulting to approach the place of human rights in the era of decolonization simply in terms of Westernization and alignment.
The durability of the human rights concept in the Third World should
not be solely attributed to the work of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty
International. It was apparent at the foundational conference of the Third
World, and in many of the anti-colonial movements that established the
independent states of Africa and Asia. Just as it does in the great French
and American Declarations, human rights also finds an important place in
the foremost political charter of the early Third World, the Bandung Final
Communiqu.

73. Romulo, supra note 1, at 54.

74. Romulo, supra note 1, at 36; see also Romulo, supra note 1, at 6869.