"The Bamako Appeal 2006 calls for the creation of a new ‘historical subject’ (a collective force for social transformation). This concept is close to the classical Marxist one, in which this subject was the working class. However, the Appeal does not seem to have either this class or a homogeneous substitute for such in mind. It seems to the thinking of an emancipatory force". April 15, 2006. By Peter Waterman, pdf format.
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The fifth edition of the World Social Forum took place once again in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from January 26 to 31, 2005.
It was opened to organisations and individuals and a new perspective and methodological approach was adopted to increase collaboration and dialogue during the event. The goal was to avoid repetitive activities on similar issues that were developed independently of each other. This initiative started from the premise that it is not possible to build another world without combining efforts, building alternatives and interlinking common actions and campaigns.
Those who participated in the previous WSFs have contributed to create a new type of organisation, which is more a process than an institution. While being extraordinarily ambitious in its diversity, in the wide range of topics it deals with and in the activities it holds, the Forum is also consciously modest with regard to its role: its Charter of Principles clearly specifies that it is not the only space of convergence.
This is just one more space within a broader process of global struggles and its function is to offer a way by means of which people who share common concerns and believe that "another world is possible" could jump over geographic, cultural and political differences and could freely develop new plans, strategies, initiatives and organisations.
It is a space for democratic debate of ideas, reflective thinking, formulation of proposals, exchange of experiences and interlinking of social movements, networks, NGOs and other civil society organisations. After the first world meeting held in 2001, it became a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives to neoliberal policies.
The International Council of the Forum has decided that next year's editon will be realized in a spread out manner, in different places in the world. With this, the WSF ensures it's commitment with it's Letter of Priciples, seeking for a permanet process of searching and building new alternatives, which are not limited to the events proposed.
In this report we offer articles, discussions from previous regional forums, news, debates and background information on the World Social Forum 2005. Coverage was also provided during the development of this event.
New book
The World Social Bibliography A bibliography on the World Social Forum and the global solidarity and justice movement. By Jai Sen and Peter Waterman, with Madhuresh Kumar, December 2003, pdf format.
Versión
en español
The V World Social Forum is available at this site for download in RTF and PDF files. It already has the modifications requested until January 11, at 12:30.
The World Social Forum has inspired many other local, regional or thematic events, within the WSF spirit. There is a list of those events, which are not organized by the WSF Secretariat or the International Council but that, in some cases, are carried out by organizations that are in the WSF process or have participated in some of its editions.
Activists noted Africa’s history of injustices and oppression through colonialism, slavery and apartheid, but swiftly moved on to the injustices of present-day, post-colonial Africa : privatisation and cost-recovery, wars fought over Africa’s natural resources, heavy debt burdens and conditionalities, unfair trade and disease. Contrary to dominant accounts of the continent as an almost biblically ’cursed’ ’basket case’ and Africans as helpless victims, delegate after delegate emphasised that Africa’s poverty, wars and disease pandemics are causally related to a global economic system that is predicated on the poverty of the many. By Amanda Alexander, Mandisa Mbali, December 2004
The campaign was launched in Lusaka with a ringing and militant call on African people to mobilise themselves to provide their governments with the moral authority to reject the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) being negotiated between the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the European Union (EU). Defining the terms of the discussion, Kathleen Boohene of the Third World Network Africa, described EPAs as a looming monster that would devour all our progress. December 2004.
The third edition of the African Social Forum (ASF), from 10-14 December 2004 in Lusaka, Zambia, faces as one of its challenges the broadening of the forum to make it more popular than it has been up until now by enabling movements which do not appear on the African or international scene to express their voices and concerns.
A compilation of some of the best reflections on the European Social Forum was published in time for the recent ESF evaluation in Paris by Eurotopia and the Guide for Social Transformation in Europe, both projects which TNI has helped co-found. This is the second such effort to bring together the debates on Social Forum futures.
The intention of the I World-wide Social Fórum of the Health is to construct an international agenda of action with the main objective to support the formularization and the construction of politics that guarantee the organization of national public systems of health and social security. January 23-25, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
The second Moroccan Social Forum (MSF) gathered in Rabat between the 27 th and 28 th of July 2004. The Forum represents a significant and distinctive experience in the Arab region, where civil society groups are slowly, but surely, opening up to the experiences of the social forums. The agenda of the Forum covered issues of neo-liberal globalization and human development, women’s rights, geopolitical changes, democracy and public freedoms, cultural dimensions, environment and sustainable development, migration, and the dynamics of the Arab social movement.
Launching of Tanzania Social Forum (TSF) will be continuation of the Africa Social Forum(ASF) and Southern Africa Social Forum (SASF) that take place annually since Bamako, Mali (2002) and Lusaka, Zambia (2003) respectively. The ASF is a prelude to the World Social Forum (WSF) that was now an annual event that
deliberately organised to coincide with the World Economic Forum. The World Economic Forum is a gathering of rich nations and powerful corporations from the North whom makes key decisions on global policies. The timing of WSF is meant to signify civil society voices opposing the high level profit motivated deliberations at the expenses of poor countries and their citizens.
The First Americas Social Forum (ASF) took place in Quito, Ecuador, from July 25 to 30, 2004. The ASF programme is grouped in five thematic axes: The economic order, The violent face of the neo-liberal project, Power, democracy and the State, Cultures and communication and Indigenous peoples and African descendents. Gender and diversities have been transversal themes.
All organizations are invited to send comments and proposals for the Anti-War Assembly and related activities at the coming World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brasil this January 26-31, 2005. Deadline for comments is on November 29. The WSF in Porto Alegre this January 2005 offers this opportunity. Building on the consensus from the Jakarta Peace Conference in May 2003, the Global Assembly of the Anti-War Movement in Mumbai in January 2004 and the Beirut Anti-War and Anti-Globalization Assembly in September 2004, the proposal is to convene a Global Anti-War Assembly at the next WSF.
The Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND) will be participating in the upcoming WSF in Porto Alegre and proposes three workshops on reform and democracy in the Arab region, the future of the Arab social movement and issues of gender, media, and youth.
Reports and news on the fifth edition of the WSF, held from January 26 to 31 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Part of the Choike team covered the Forum's activities directly from Porto Alegre.
During the World Social Forum of 2005, the organizations supporting the Charter will gather in Porto Alegre to debate its contents, develop any additions and define a platform of action towards its implementation. If you have suggestions on the present Charter, please do not hesitate to send your comments to cohreamericas@cohre.org, up to the 30 November 2004. The organizations that have been coordinating the Charter process - COHRE (Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions), HIC (Habitat International Coalition), Forum of Urban Reform from Brazil, POLIS Institute and the Urban Forum from Ecuador - are responsible for summarising all new suggestions received by this date. See also "The right to adequate housing" (Choike's in depth report).
The Feminist Dialogue represents both opportunity and challenge in taking forward this vision for change because it places transnational or international feminist organizing centre-stage. At this point in time we hope that we can broaden our avenues of collective strategizing. What can we achieve through a concerted effort at feminist organizing outside of our internal 'borders'? How can we change the world from inside through this organizing? It is relevant to put our time and energy into it?
As the fifth edition of the World Social Forum draws to a close, the largest gathering of social movements so far, analysis and debate is far from being over. A heated debate has began between those who consider the Forum exclusively as an open space for reflective thinking and those who argue that the WSF should be allowed to assume political positions translating ideas into action. This is a collection of articles and reports on the V World Social Forum and its impact on the struggle to building "another possible world".
The World Social Forum has grown exponentially since its first edition, January 2001. It has travelled to Mumbai, India, 2004. It has taken on regional, national and local form. And at Porto Alegre, January 2005, some 150,000 people were present. Despite repeated complaints of organisational confusion and political incoherence, the WSF is the most organised expression of what the Call of Social Movements has called the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement. This paper is not intended to evaluate or to theorise the communications and culture of the World Social Forum (WSF), but rather to draw attention to these and to make available some relevant information and sources. By Peter Waterman, May 24, 2005, pdf format.
The triangular relationship between trade unions, the global justice and solidarity movement and academia seems to provide a space within which it is possible not only to reflect, at some critical distance, on the movements themselves but also one within which there can be some serious dialogue on the relations between the three. Although the new movements have little trouble looking critically at themselves and each other, trade unions and political parties do have a problem here. August 2005.
The author comments on the increasing events and articles debating the future of the WSF. He explains this in terms of the uncertainties facing the movements and their actions. He tries to address these uncertainties, relating them to the questions of efficacy, representation and organisation and the way that the WSF combines a celebration of diversity with the construction of a strong consensuses lead to collective actions.
"Ground-level involvement is the centre of gravity for politics, and it is this that feeds wider reflection. As a result of this new methodology and the preponderance of self-run projects for discussion, the WSF is developing an even more global nature in that it is open to all who wish to join in, and not just those who can get to Porto Alegre". Interview with Eric Toussaint.
This special issue has been some time in the making. It is the largest issue of "Ephemera" (free journal for the discussion of theoretical and political perspectives on all aspects of organization) to date and its range and number of contributions say something of the compelling magnet of Social Forums in contemporary critical political culture. Ephemera offers this issue as both record and analysis of the Social Forum ‘movement’, and their publishers hope that it will provide relevant reading in the lead up to the next ‘round’ of Forum events early in 2006. May 2005, pdf format.
Fred Halliday’s verbal assault on activists at the World Social Forum rouses Peter Waterman to a passionate defence of the “global justice and solidarity movement”. March 2005.
"The World Social Forum (WSF) is coming to Africa in 2007. This is great news. But how exactly will the coming of the WSF to Africa in 2007 advance the struggle against neo-liberalism and capitalist domination? This is an important question for people who want to stop the centuries-long pain and suffering of the masses in Africa and other parts of the world". "The foundation of the WSF is international solidarity. The main reason the WSF is coming to Africa in 2007 is because we must give solidarity where there is the greatest need. Africa, taken as a whole, is undoubtedly the one continent where the greatest suffering of humanity is to be found in the world today".
According to Adamovsky, the current emancipatory movements can be said to be in two opposite situations (somewhat schematically). The first one is that in which they suceed in mobilizing a great deal of social energy in favor of a political project, but which they do in a way that makes them fall into the traps of “heteronomous politics”. By “heteronomous”, I refer to the political mechanisms by means of which all that social energy ends up being channeled in a way that benefits the interests of the ruling class or, at least, minimizes the radical potential of that popular mobilization. The second situation is that of those movements and collectives that reject any contact with the state and with heteronomous politics in general (parties, lobbies, elections, etc.), only to find themselves reduced to small identity-groups with few chances of making a real impact in terms of radical change. March 2006.
"The Bamako Appeal (BA) is a substantial international anti-capitalist document of some 9,000 words, containing a 10-point programme for a global social transformation. It seems intended to do for our globalised informatised capitalist era what Marx’s Communist Manifesto of 1848 did for his inter/national industrial one. The BA was drawn up at a conference organised to immediately preceed one of the tri-continental editions of the World Social Forum, in Bamako, Mali, January 18, 2006. It was sponsored by a small group of overlapping non-governmental organisations: the Forum du Tiers Monde/Third World Forum, the World Forum of Alternatives, the Tricontinental Centre, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, the Malian Social Forum and a Dakar-based ecology and development NGO, ENDA". (For relevant URLs see Resources in this document, pdf format).
We include this Waterman's paper because we consider it useful in the framework of the WSF: "The old, established and traditional social movement (developed under a national industrial capitalism, institutionalised, Westocentric, incorporated into old understandings about and with capital, state and ‘development’) needs to take congnisance of its relative power and privilege. And it then needs to make space for something that might be relatively marginal and weak but that nonetheless comes out of a globalised and networked capitalism. The ‘movement of movements’ proposes new understandings of the world; it identifies new arenas of dispute with the hegemonic forces; and it suggests new forms of dialogue between social movements". September 2005.
Take part in the thematic consultation for the polycentric WSF 2006 – Americas venue. The Americas Hemispherical Council’s (HC) Working Group on Methodology and Contents has launched a thematic consultation on the 6th Polycentric World Social Forum – Americas and the 2nd Americas Social Forum, which will take place from January 25th to 29th, in Caracas, Venezuela.
Groups and movements from Asian countries met together on June, 4-5, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to start off a process of discussion about a polycentric Asia Continental Forum and to decide as early as possible on the location and dates of the Forum. The meeting also discussed the formation of a WSF Asia-Pacific Platform.
