18-point agreement
Proposed terms to form Malaysia
The 18-point agreement, or the 18-point memorandum, was a list of 18 points drawn up by Sarawak, proposing terms to form Malaysia, during negotiations prior to the creation of the new federation in 1963.
A Commission of Enquiry, headed by Lord Cameron Cobbold, and The Lansdowne Committee, an inter-governmental committee, were appointed to aid in the drafting of the Malaysia Agreement. Lord Lansdowne served for Britain and Tun Abdul Razak, Deputy Prime Minister of the Federation of Malaya, served for Malaya. A similar memorandum, known as the 20-point agreement, was prepared and submitted by North Borneo.
The 18-point agreement, Malaysia Agreement (MA63), and Inter-government committee (IGC) report often serves as a focal point amongst those who argue that Sarawak's rights within the federation have been eroded over time. Questions remain whether these pre-constitutional or foundational documents can be defined as "law" and legally enforceable under Article 160 of the Constitution of Malaysia. Shad Saleem Faruqi, professor of law at the University of Malaya, however, stated that such pre-constitutional documents had been used in other parts of the world to interpret the constitution and domestic laws. In 2021 amendment to the Constitution of Malaysia, Article 160 (2) of the federal constitution was amended with the new definition of the term "federation" where the Malaysian federation is formed in accordance to the 1963 Malaysian agreement in addition to 1957 Malaya agreement. Maximus Ongkili, minister in Prime Minister's department argued that such amendment gives legal basis to other pre-constitutional documents such as 18-point agreement, 20-point agreement and IGC report because these documents are found as appendices under MA63 and Malaysia Act 1963.
Background
On 31 July 1962, an agreement was signed between British prime minister Harold Macmillan and the prime minister of Malaya Tunku Abdul Rahman that anticipated the formation of Malaysia by 31 August 1963 with a proposed initial framework of state constitutions of North Borneo and Sarawak as shown in annex and appendices.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “18-point agreement” is proposed terms to form Malaysia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through 18-point, agreement and Proposed, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16056903. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1963, 2021, 1957 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “18-point agreement” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.