When it comes to celebrating the Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) @30, we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place – the “rock” of the mid 90s geopolitics and the rise of neoliberalism and the ‘hard place’ of 2026 – with ongoing genocide, war and a collapsing multilateralism.

While major changes were taking place in 1996 within Europe and Asia – European elites were in the process of shaping the European Union (EU) and keen to forge trade and investment relations with the Asian juggernaut of economic markets that could rival the US hegemony in APEC. It was also an era that had its ‘monsters’ as Gramsci would see it: The dictatorship of Suharto still ruled in Indonesia, (and he used his long reach to derail the holding of the AEPF on the side of the ASEM 1 Summit) and France was nuclear testing in the Pacific. However, the emerging dynamic of a strong civil society and multi-sectoral movement in Thailand ensured that the AEPF 1 was held in Bangkok and ASEM 1 and was greeted by big street rallies of workers, peasants and students.

The Asian and European movements which converged in Bangkok on the eve of the ASEM 1, while engaging on the wide ranging challenges on the impacts of neoliberal globalisation on peoples’ rights in Asia and Europe, were also driven by a very ambitious cross regional focus. AEPF 1 was determined to open the road on ‘untouchable’ geo-political issues: the independence of East Timor, the military dictatorship in Myanmar and the British occupation of Northern Ireland. Bangkok was a groundbreaking moment on these agendas – in terms of strengthening cross regional solidarity, but also in terms of inserting substantive issues on the ASEM 1 government agenda. The global media assembled in Bangkok gave ample coverage to AEPF 1 agendas – from the recently established WTO  (1995) and the ASEM 1 narrow focus on trade and investment – to the AEPF 1 insistence on peoples rights (workers, farmers, women, indigenous peoples) and the right to self-determination.

The agenda  of AEPF 1 was also re-enforced and reverberated in the “Parliament of the Streets” when workers, farmers, students and buddhist monks held parallel rallies. These were expressions of an emerging  dynamic participatory democracy movement which was preparing the ground breaking 1997 Constitution of Thailand.

Bangkok 1996: a new step in building a people-to-people cross regional agenda

The AEPF was ahead of the World Social Forum (WSF) –but also contributed to the WSF – while maintaining its unique character of constantly walking on bi-regional joint campaigns. During these years, the AEPF has provided key spaces for progressive movements, civil society organisations as well as parliamentarians in Asia and Europe to connect their struggles and AEPF Work Groups have marked up quite some achievements:

• the fight against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment that started at AEPF 1 and led to the collapse of the MAI in 1998.
• the solidarities and struggles in Asia and Europe for an independent East-Timor and against the military dictatorships in Indonesia and in Myanmar
• the campaigns against corporate driven unequal neoliberal trade and investments agreements and investment protection and unjust and crippling debt
• The establishment of the Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights
• the response of the ‘Beijing Nights’  to the global financial crisis which led to a concrete programme for a systemic overhaul of the global financial architecture and system
• the proactive role of the organisations of the AEPF in the launch and ongoing Global Campaign against the power of transnational corporations and for a Binding Treaty at the UN
• the exploration of the framework and parameters of an alternative regionalism – and how to advance programmes for social transformation – food sovereignty, decent wages, peoples health, education and housing

Throughout the past 30 years the AEPF has also:

• carried a multi-dimensional Peace agenda – from the Campaign for a Nuclear Free Pacific to addressing the Cold War at the DMZ on the Korean  Peninsula – to peace building in Myanmar
• maintained a permanent protest vigil on the violations of human rights and peoples’ rights throughout the period – whether social leaders, community activists ‘disappeared or salvaged – including in the case of the extra judicial killing (EJKs) in the drug war in the Philippines; political prisoners or the forced displacement of migrant and refugee people in both continents, including and above all  the forced disappearance of Lao civil society leader Sombath Somphone, the co-host of the AEPF in Laos.

AEPF organisations have converged in the common struggle to renew and strengthen the process of democratisation – whether against dictatorship or the rise of authoritarianism in both Asia and Europe.

The AEPF: An Unfinished Agenda & the Challenges of the current conjuncture

However, when we look back we see many unfinished or de-railed agendas. And as we look forward we are challenged with the major shifts in contemporary geo-economics, geopolitics and climate crisis. Across the scope of Asia and Europe. We see an agenda of empire, neo-colonialism, and aggressive capitalist extractivism re-inventing itself.

In AEPF – the search for a new vision and strategy has already started in the planned webinars on @AEPF30 and is being debated in on-going initiatives of campaign work. We need to test these insights in new alliances with peoples of other regions – Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

The answers to What Europe do we want? And What Asia do we want? will need to be contested and built within the framework of a global people-planet centered agenda for action in the next decades.

As AEPF, we are deepening the lessons of the past 30 years – and in some exchanges and encounters – the inspiration of the Bandung Conference of 70 years ago brings key elements of such a future agenda. But now it will be towards a Bandung de los Pueblos – towards a Global South Front – a Bandung of the Peoples.

AEPF brought TNI to many spaces in Asia and Europe, from Bangkok to Korea, to Vietnam, China, Laos, Mongolia, and Indonesia and from the UK to Finland, Denmark, Italy to Belgium. We can not express how these journeys – always in the partnership with so many movements, organisations and individuals –  have enriched our understanding, built connections and created communities of joint struggle for a better world.

Now in retrospect it is both daunting and inspiring to read the concluding sentence of the Bangkok AEPF 1 statement – as it seems very resonant for these times – an era of new ‘monsters’  and yet it is a call for new strategies and a search for a common agenda that can unite not only the movements of Asia and Europe – but also contribute to forge a global agenda for people and planet.

“…The Conference calls on European and Asia governments to reaffirm the overarching principles of decolonisation and the rights of peoples and nations to self-determination.”

Asia-Europe Conference, Bangkok, February 27-29, 1996
@2026

Transnational Institute (TNI)
Pietje Vervest
Brid Brennan