The Colombo Declaration: Hands off Asia!

July 18, 2026 | Colombo, Sri Lanka

Gathered in Colombo for ‘Hands Off Asia: A People’s Call for Sovereignty and Solidarity’, a conference organized by the International Peoples’ Assembly (Asia) and supported by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we – representing movements, political parties, trade unions, and people’s organizations from 15 countries across Asia – commit ourselves to a single call that echoes across our continent:

Hands Off Asia, which means:

Militarily.

Hands off our seas. Hands off our lands. Hands off our skies.

No US or allied military bases on our sovereign territory. No AUKUS. No Quad. No war on Iran. No genocide in Palestine.

An end to the encirclement of Asia.

Economically.

Hands off our economies. Hands off our resources. Hands off our livelihoods.

No sovereign debt bondage. No IMF conditionalities. No tariff coercion. No technology blockades.

The right of Asian peoples to build economies of our own choosing.

Politically.

Hands off our politics. Hands off our elections. Hands off our movements.

No regime change or far-right proxies.

The right of Asia’s peoples to determine our own political future.

Ideologically and culturally.

Hands off our histories. Hands off our media. Hands off our imagination.

No colonisation of the ways we know ourselves and each other.

The right of Asia’s peoples to tell our own story and build our own peoples’ culture.

The enemy is one and indivisible. So must our answer be. We commit to peoples’ solidarity across the continent – toward the sovereignty, peace, and socialist horizon our peoples have always fought for.

The future of Asia will be decided by its peoples. Hands off Asia!