ifda dossier 74 - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

matters in most fora, beginning with UNCTAD and subsequently in the
UN and its various specialized agencies such as the IMF, the World
Bank, and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization
(UNIDO).4
The Afro-Asian movement had its beginnings in the rising nationalist
sentiments at the turn of the century and the concomitant dirge against
colonial domination.4 At two of the conferences in Europe in the mid
1920s, African and Asian leaders were able to meet each other and
exchange notes about what was deemed their common struggle against
imperialism. But, it was only in the post World War I1 period, as one
by one, the Asian and African colonies began the process of shedding
their colonial fetters and becoming sovereign nation states, that they
sought to cooperate with each other against their present and former
colonial masters.
Prior to an actual gathering of Afro-Asian states, there were the
separate African and Asian efforts to come together. A Pan-African
Con~ress met in Manchester in October 1945 and made the first forceful
demand for independence for Africa.4 It also expressed its support for
independence for Asia. In Asia, the first meeting of Asian countries was
the Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi in 1947. 29 countries and
territories were represented at this conference which tried to set up a
permanent machinery to facilitate an ongoing Asian consultation.4 However,
this institutional effort did not get off the ground due to rivalry
between China and India.8
Regardless of the lack of progress in organizational terms for the Asian
countries, they shared, together with the African states, a number of
common features which were to link them together. There were the
common bonds of relative poverty and low level economic productivity
compared with the Western industrial countries, the unifying factor of
being non-white and coloured in a world dominated by white peoples,
and a common colonial past which bred a strong anti-colonial sentiment
right into the post-independence period. In addition, an intense desire
to ensure that political independence recently attained is not eroded and
re-established in other forms, particularly in the economic sphere, has
been said to be the main factor making for an Afro-Asian solidarity. It
is also this same factor which has yielded the foreign policy stance of