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Indonesia pitches ‘Bandung Spirit’ strategy amid ‘strategic crossroads’
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Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi addresses the 78th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City on September 23, 2023. (AFP/Kena Betancur)
“We are again at a strategic crossroads, as in 1955,” Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Saturday, as New York City in the United States began to wind down after the week-long clamor of world leaders debating the war in Ukraine, the debt crisis and the current shortcomings of multilateralism.
“Global solidarity and collective responsibility are the only answers,” Retno added. “[And] this is the main essence transpired from the Bandung Conference, or the Asia-Africa Conference, in 1955.”
Retno was delivering Indonesia’s national address to the 78th UNGA, as part of a yearly custom where countries divulge their international outlook and priorities for the following year.
A major theme of this year’s UNGA was the lackluster progress of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, meant to be achieved by 2030 to prevent further political instability and irreversible damage to the environment. Many developing countries have blamed the lack of progress on the unfulfilled pledges of their wealthier counterparts and the preferential financial system that encourages the widening gap between them.
Read also: Indonesia reiterates call to reform global financial system
Throughout the week, Indonesian delegates called for a reform of the world’s most influential financial institutions. They spoke about the right to development in the Global South, a catchall term to describe developing countries and emerging powers that Jakarta believes to be at the brunt of an increasingly divided world and unjust global order.
It is a new cold war, Retno said on Saturday, while dressed in a bright traditional woven blouse from East Nusa Tenggara. As such, it was time to bring back the “Bandung Spirit”, she said, citing the strategy Indonesia adopted with fellow Asian and African nations in 1955 to demonstrate a refusal to pick sides while championing the emancipation of colonized countries during the Cold War.
