Sixty years ago, Indonesia'€™s founding father, then president Sukarno, or Bung Karno, introduced the idea of awakening the awareness of Asian and African nations to acquire their right to life as free nations who reject injustice, who resist all forms of imperialism.

Sixty years ago we called for Asian-African solidarity to fight for freedom, to bring about welfare and to ensure justice for our people.

This was the fervor of the 1955 Asian-African Conference, the essence of the Bandung spirit.

Today, 60 years later, we meet again in this country, Indonesia, in a different world. Formerly occupied nations have become free and sovereign. However, our struggle is not over.

 The world we inherit today is still rife with injustice, inequality and global violence. The shared goals for the birth of a new world civilization, a new world order based on justice, equality and prosperity, are still far from realization.

Global injustice and imbalance remain stark. As rich nations, which comprise only 20 percent of the world'€™s population, consume 70 percent of the world'€™s resources, global injustice becomes crystal clear.

As a few hundred super-rich in the north enjoy ever more comfort and luxury, while 1.2 billion in the south are helpless in the face of poverty with incomes of less than US$2 a day, global injustice becomes increasingly evident.

When a group of rich nations feel they can change the world by using their power alone, global imbalance brings more misery, as the UN is rendered helpless.

 Recent acts of war and violence without a UN mandate render pointless the existence of a body encompassing all nations.

Therefore, the nations of Asia and Africa urge reform of the UN so it can function to the fullest, as a world body that prioritizes justice for all of us, for all nations.

To me, global injustice feels even more suffocating when the Bandung spirit, which demands freedom for all nations in Asia and Africa, has promised justice for six decades.

We and the world are still in debt to the people of Palestine.

The world has helplessly witnessed the suffering of Palestine'€™s people, who live in fear and injustice under a protracted occupation.

We cannot turn away from the suffering of the people of Palestine. We must keep struggling alongside them.

We must support the birth of an independent Palestine.

Global injustice is also clear when a group of nations are reluctant in acknowledging the world'€™s changed realities.

The view that the world'€™s economic problems can only be solved by the World Bank, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the Asian Development Bank is outdated. I am of the view that the management of the world'€™s economy cannot be submitted only to those three international financial institutions.

We must build a new global economic order, one open to all new economic powers. We urge the reform of the global financial architecture to eradicate the domination of one group of nations over others.

Today, the world needs a collective global leadership run in a fair and accountable manner.

As a rising economic power, Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population on the face of the earth, and the world'€™s third-largest democracy, is ready to play its global role as a positive force for peace and welfare.

Indonesia is ready to work together with all parties to realize this noble goal.

Today and tomorrow, we gather in Jakarta to address the challenges of global injustice and imbalance.

Today and tomorrow, our peoples wait for the answers to the problems that they face.

Today and tomorrow, the world waits for our measures in bringing the nations of Asia and Africa to stand on par with the other nations of the world.

We can do all this by remembering the Bandung Spirit, by referring to the three goals that are forefathers struggled for 60 years ago.

First, welfare. We must strengthen cooperation to eradicate poverty, improve education and health services, develop sciences and technology and widen employment.

Second, solidarity. We must grow and progress together to increase trade and investment among us, by building economic cooperation between the regions of Asia and Africa, through mutual help in building connectivity, infrastructure connecting our ports, our airports and our roads.

Indonesia will work to become a maritime axis connecting the two continents.

Third, internal and external stability, and respect for human rights.

We must ask, what is wrong with us that so many countries of Asia and Africa are ridden with various internal and external conflicts that impede our economic development?

We must work together to overcome threats of violence, quarrels and radicalism, including the Islamic State movement. We must protect the rights of our people.

We must declare war against drug abuse, which destroys the future of our children.

We must resolve disputes peacefully, whether those within countries or those among nations.

As such, Indonesia has initiated informal meetings among member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to seek resolutions to the diverse conflicts presently rife in the Islamic world.

We must also work hard to create stability and external security, which is the prerequisite to smooth development in each country.

We must work together to ensure that our oceans and seas are secure for the traffic of global trade.

We demand that inter-nation disputes are not resolved by the use of violence.

This is the duty and challenge before us, the solutions we must find and formulate through this Asian-African Conference.

Through this forum I wish to convey my conviction that the world'€™s future lies around the equator, in our hands, the Asian and African nations on these two continents.
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The above is an excerpt from President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s opening speech to the 60th Asian-African Conference in Jakarta on Wednesday

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