From Bandung to the DNS

In April 1955, the heads of states of 29 African and Asian countries met in the Indonesian city of Bandung for the Bandung Conference, the first African-Asian intercontinental conference, officially called Asian-African Conference (AAC), also known as “the first intercontinental conference of coloured peoples in the history of mankind”, as Indonesia's head of state and host of the meeting, President Sukarno, pointed out in his welcome speech. From 18 to 24 April that year, the Indonesian government together with the heads of states from Burma, Ceylon, India and Pakistan (also called the sponsoring countries of Bandung) received leaders including Presidents, Kings and Prime Ministers from another 24 Asian and African countries to initiate new forms of cooperation among newly independent states. For centuries, the countries participating in Bandung were held under European colonial rule which blocked their economic, cultural and political development and created a global imbalance benefiting development in basically all sectors of European societies or the West as a whole, meaning the European continent (mostly its Western countries) and parts of North America. While Latin America and the Caribbean (the LAC region) were not present at Bandung these countries later joined the movements and organizations of what today is known as the Global South and which will be discussed throughout this chapter. The objective of the chapter is to draw a historical line from the processes of decolonization in the Global South to the discourses and the ecosystem of Internet Governance