Why Global Majority Leadership Matters for Tech and Migration Policy Today

In April 1955, representatives from twenty-nine Asian and African countries gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, for what would become one of the most consequential political meetings of the twentieth century. The Asia-Africa Conference brought together states and movements emerging from colonial rule to articulate a shared vision of self-determination, non-alignment, and resistance to imperial domination. Bandung was not merely a diplomatic event. It was a declaration that knowledge, leadership, and political imagination did not belong exclusively to Europe and North America. It insisted that those most affected by global power asymmetries must be central in shaping the world to come.

Seventy years later, that lesson feels urgently relevant again.

Today’s geopolitical terrain is marked not only by renewed authoritarianism and militarization but also by the rapid expansion of surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence, and data-driven governance. Nowhere is this more visible, or more consequential, than in the domain of migration. Borders have become testing grounds for high-risk technologies: biometric databases, predictive analytics, drones, social media monitoring, and spyware are increasingly deployed to sort, track, deter, and criminalize people on the move. These systems are often developed and exported by powerful states and private companies, then implemented in contexts such as the border or in places of occupation like the West Bank or Gaza, where legal protections are weakest and accountability is hardest to secure.