WORLD SOCIAL FORUM

The World Social Forum will provide a space for building economic alternatives, for exchanging experiences and for strengthening South-North alliances between NGOs, unions and social movements. It will also be an opportunity to develop concrete projects and instruct the public.

It will take place every year in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, during the same period as the World Economic Forum, which happens in Davos, Switzerland, at the end of January. Since 1971, The World Economic Forum has played a key role in formulating and promoting neoliberal policies throughout the world. It's sponsored by a Swiss organization that serves as a consultant to the United Nations and it's financed by more than one thousand corporations.

The World Social Forum was developed as a consequence of the massive manifestation against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) in 1998, the great gathering against the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in November 1999, and of the recent protests in Washington against the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

Such movements have put in evidence the emersion of a civic movement beyond national borders. For decades, those institutions have been making decisions that affect the lives of people all over the world, without a clear system for accountability and democratic participation. Now, however, they have come to realize that they must state their decisions and policies to the public opinion.

In the same way, governments must be aware that such vigilance will be exerted more and more rigorously on them. Some governments will no longer be able to allege that disastrous measures were “imposed” on them from above, once we know that they have contributed or approved the elaboration of such measures inside those institutions. They should also account their positions taken in these meetings for the Parliaments and their citizens.

As professor and linguistic Noam Chomsky said, the World Social Forum offers “opportunities of unparalleled importance to bring together popular forces from many and varied constituencies from the richer and poor countries alike, to develop constructive alternatives that will defend the overwhelming majority of the world's population from the attack on fundamental human rights, and to move on to break down illegitimate power concentrations and extend the domains of justice and freedom.”

Graça Machel, ex-first lady of Moçambique; Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer; Tabaré Vasquez, president of Frente Ampla del Uruguay ; José Bové , french agriculture; Nora de Cortiñas, president of Mothers of May Park; Sebastião Salgado, brazilian photographer; Kaylash Satyarti, Coordinator of March against Children’s work; Dita Sari, Indonesian Leader of Student’s Movement; François Chesnais, French economist; João Pedro Stédile, Leader of Brazilian Landless Workers; Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Honour President of the Workers Party; Marina da Silva, Brazilian Senator; Njoki Njehu, 50 Years is Enough! representant ; Susan George, Vice the president of ATTAC – France; Xochitl Bertha Galvez Ruiz, Mexican entrepreneur ; François Houtart, President of Centro Tri-Continental; Danielle Miterrand, France Libertè’s president; Emir Sader, Brazilian Sociologist; Frei Beto, Brazilian Dominican monk and writer; Kevin Danaher, Global Exchange Director; João Manuel Cardoso de Mello, Unicamp Coordinator; Ariel Dorfman, Chilean writer; Ignácio Ramonet, Le Monde Diplomatique Director; Oscar Niemayer, Brazilian architect; Leonardo Boff, Brazilian Teologist; Lucio Gutierrez , Equatorian Colonel; Patrick Viveret, philosopher; Maria Conceição Tavares, Brazilian economist; Milton Santos, Brazilian geographer; Vandana Shiva physicist, ecofeminist, writer, and leader in the international moviments for the preservation of indigenous agricultural and environmental knowledge; João Felício, President of Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT); Eric Toussaint, President of the Committee for the Anulation of the External Debt of Third World Countries; Yoko Kitazawa, President of Jubilee 2000 Japan; Georgina Djeutana, Economist and member of the African campaign Jubilee 2000; Eduardo Suplicy, Brazilian Senator; Boaventura de Souza Santos, Portuguese Sociologist Professor ; Riccardo Petrella, Counsellor of the European Committee and professor of Université Catholique de Louvain; Helena Hirata, Brazilian Sociologist; Kjeld Jakobsen, International Relations Secretary of CUT; Tânia Bacelar, Brazilian Economist; Rayén Quiroga Martínez , Chilean Economist; René Passet , President of ATTAC Scientific Council; Walden Bello, Sociology Professor of University of Filipinas and Co-director of Focus on the Global South; Victor de Gennaro, Central Workers president; Ermínia Maricato, Director of Habitational Laboratory of FAU-USP; Robin Round, Regional Coordinator/Policy Analyst of Halifax Initiative; Bernard Cassen , President of ATTAC France and director of Le Monde Diplomatique; Aloizio Mercadante, Brazilian Federal Deputy; Norman Solomon, Midia critic; Samir Amin, Egyptian Economist; José Ramos Horta, East Timor leader and Peace Nobel Winner; Mark Ritchie, Presidentof the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Minnesota – EUA;

Themes
When proposing and divulging a schedule for the Forum, the organizing committee wants to present clearly the aims and the political meaning of the event. In its final version, the document will be opened with the topic “Another World is Possible”. Observation about “The Basis of our Project for Social Transformation” will come next. Finally, there will be the set of conferences and the names of the first invited speakers.

The committee’s intention is that the conferences reinforce the alternatives, which have been proposed for the last years, by the ones who have resisted to the logic of the market, money and unequally. As well as opening a space for a real debate on such proposals, the schedule should encourage the worldwide organizations to present, in the afternoons, activities about more specific themes. The complete four main themes are available in the web pages:

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)