The Fifth World Social Forum

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The FifthWorld Social Forum
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History

• Antecedents
• 1998 Multilateral Agreement on Investments
  revealed in Le Monde Diplomatique, Tobin Tax
  (1978), ATTAC (1997)
• 1999-2000 protests in Seattle at WTO meeting, in
  Washington and Prague at World Bank-IMF meetings
• World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (since
  1970) academic anti-Davos meetings in Europe
• 2/2000 WSF conceived by Oded Grajew (Ethos
  Institute), Francisco Whitaker (PT, Brazilian
  Commission for Justice and Peace), Bernard Cassen
  (LMD, ATTAC)
• Selection of Porto Alegre
• Another world is possible

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History

• WSF 2001, Porto Alegre
• 4,700 delegates, 117 countries, 400 self-run
  activities
• WSF 2002, Porto Alegre
• 12,274 delegates, 123 countries, 622 self-run
  activities
• WSF 2003, Porto Alegre
• 20,000 delegates, 123 countries, 25,000 Youth
  Camp participants, 1,300 self-run activities
• WSF 2004, Mumbai, India
• 74,126 delegates from 117 countries, 1,250
  self-run activities

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Organization

• International Council
• About 50 member organizations, including AFL-CIO,
  Global Exchange, Greenpeace, OXFAM, Focus on the
  Global South
• Goals continuity, geographical and sectorial
  balance
• Meetings Brazil, Senegal, Spain, Thailand, US
  (Miami), India, Italy
• Secretariat Brazilian and Indian Organizing
  Committees
• Funding
• Regional and thematic social forums

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Charter of Principles

• Adopted in 2001
• The World Social Forum is an open meeting place
  for reflective thinking, democratic debate of
  ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of
  experiences and interlinking for effective
  action, by groups and movements of civil society
  that are opposed to neoliberalism and to
  domination of the world by capital and any form
  of imperialism, and are committed to building a
  planetary society directed towards fruitful
  relationships among Humankind and between it and
  the Earth.

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Charter of Principles

• The alternatives proposed at the World Social
  Forum stand in opposition to a process of
  globalization commanded by the large
  multinational corporations and by the governments
  and international institutions at the service of
  those corporations interests, with the
  complicity of national governments. They are
  designed to ensure that globalization in
  solidarity will prevail as a new stage in world
  history. This will respect universal human
  rights, and those of all citizens - men and women
  - of all nations and the environment and will
  rest on democratic international systems and
  institutions at the service of social justice,
  equality and the sovereignty of peoples.

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Charter of Principles

• The meetings of the World Social Forum do not
  deliberate on behalf of the World Social Forum as
  a body. No-one, therefore, will be authorized,
  on behalf of any of the editions of the Forum, to
  express positions claiming to be those of all its
  participants. The participants in the Forum
  shall not be called on to take decisions as a
  body, whether by vote or acclamation, on
  declarations or proposals for action that would
  commit all, or the majority, of them and that
  propose to be taken as establishing positions of
  the Forum as a body. It thus does not constitute
  a locus of power to be disputed by the
  participants in its meetings, nor does it intend
  to constitute the only option for interrelation
  and action by the organizations and movements
  that participate in it.

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Charter of Principles

• The World Social Forum will always be a forum
  open to pluralism and to the diversity of
  activities and ways of engaging of the
  organizations and movements that decide to
  participate in it, as well as the diversity of
  genders, ethnicities, cultures, generations and
  physical capacities, providing they abide by this
  Charter of Principles. Neither party
  representations nor military organizations shall
  participate in the Forum. Government leaders and
  members of legislatures who accept the
  commitments of this Charter may be invited to
  participate in a personal capacity.

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Charter of Principles

• The World Social Forum is a process that
  encourages its participant organizations and
  movements to situate their actions, from the
  local level to the national level and seeking
  active participation in international contexts,
  as issues of planetary citizenship, and to
  introduce onto the global agenda the
  change-inducing practices that they are
  experimenting with in building a new world in
  solidarity.

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WSF V Process

• Criticism of previous forums too top-down and
  undemocratic, too celebrity-oriented
• Role of the Internet http//www.forumsocialmundia
  l.org.br/
• Thematic consultation
• Terrains
• Event proposals
• Agglutination
• Living Memory

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WSF V Terrains

• Assuring and defending Earth and peoples common
  goods as alternative to commodification and
  transnational control
• Sovereign economies for and of people against
  neoliberal capitalism
• Peace, demilitarisation and struggle against war,
  free trade and debt
• Autonomous thought, reappropriation and
  socialisation of knowledge and technologies
• Defending diversity, plurality and identities
• Social struggles and democratic alternatives
  against neoliberal domination
• Ethics, cosmovisions and spiritualities
  resistances and challenges for a new world
• Communication counter-hegemonic practices,
  rights and alternatives
• Arts and creation weaving and building peoples
  resistance culture
• Human rights and dignity for a just and
  egalitarian world
• Towards construction of international democratic
  order and peoples integration

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WSF V participation

• 155,000 registered participants from 135
  countries, including
• 35,000 in Youth Camp
• 6,823 from the press
• 6,880 speakers
• 2,800 volunteers, including 533 translators from
  30 countries
• 2,500 activities, all self-organized (program of
  350 pages)
• 350 final proposals

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Opening events
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Facilities

• 295 tents
• 203 rooms
• Bioarchitecture construction by teams of rural
  social movement members and soldiers

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The WSF Territory
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Meetings
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Other activities
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Causes
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People
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Vendors
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Future of the WSF

• WSF goes regional in 2006
• Social Forum of the Americas in Venezuela
• NASF?
• USSF?
• Midwest SF
• WSF in 2007 somewhere in Africa

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Impressions

• Decentralization and democratization
• Participation
• Protest vs. proposals
• Bridges
• Solidarity and camaraderie