World Social Forum 2005 Starts Tomorrow

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World Social Forum 2005
"Another World Is Possible"
Porto Alegre, Brasil, January 26-31, 2005


What the World Social Forum is

The World Social Forum is an open meeting place where groups and movements of civil society opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism, but engaged in building a planetary society centred on the human person, come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, for formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action (see the Charter of Principles). The WSF proposed to debate alternative means to building a globalization in solidarity, which respects universal human rights and those of all men and women of all nations and the environment, and is grounded in democratic international systems and institutions at the service of social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples.


World Social Forum Charter of Principles

The committee of Brazilian organizations that conceived of, and organized, the first World Social Forum, held in Porto Alegre from January 25th to 30th, 2001, after evaluating the results of that Forum and the expectations it raised, consider it necessary and legitimate to draw up a Charter of Principles to guide the continued pursuit of that initiative. While the principles contained in this Charter - to be respected by all those who wish to take part in the process and to organize new editions of the World Social Forum - are a consolidation of the decisions that presided over the holding of the Porto Alegre Forum and ensured its success, they extend the reach of those decisions and define orientations that flow from their logic.

1. 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 Humanking and between it and the Earth.

2. The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre was an event localized in time and place. From now on, in the certainty proclaimed at Porto Alegre that "another world is possible", it becomes a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives, which cannot be reduced to the events supporting it.

3. The World Social Forum is a world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this process have an international dimension.

4. 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.

5. The World Social Forum brings together and interlinks only organizations and movements of civil society from all the countries in the world, but intends neither to be a body representing world civil society.

6. 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 paarticipants 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.

7. Nonetheless, organizations or groups of organizations that participate in the Forums meetings must be assured the right, during such meetings, to deliberate on declarations or actions they may decide on, whether singly or in coordination with other participants. The World Social Forum undertakes to circulate such decisions widely by the means at its disposal, without directing, hierarchizing, censuring or restricting them, but as deliberations of the organizations or groups of organizations that made the decisions.

8. The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party context that, in a decentralized fashion, interrelates organizations and movements engaged in concrete action at levels from the local to the international to built another world.

9. 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.

10. The World Social Forum is opposed to all totalitarian and reductionist views of economy, development and history and to the use of violence as a means of social control by the State. It upholds respect for Human Rights, the practices of real democracy, participatory democracy, peaceful relations, in equality and solidarity, among people, ethnicities, genders and peoples, and condemns all forms of domination and all subjection of one person by another.

11. As a forum for debate, the World Social Forum is a movement of ideas that prompts reflection, and the transparent circulation of the results of that reflection, on the mechanisms and instruments of domination by capital, on means and actions to resist and overcome that domination, and on the alternatives proposed to solve the problems of exclusion and social inequality that the process of capitalist globalization with its racist, sexist and environmentally destructive dimensions is creating internationally and within countries.

12. As a framework for the exchange of experiences, the World Social Forum encourages understanding and mutual recognition among its participant organizations and movements, and places special value on the exchange among them, particularly on all that society is building to centre economic activity and political action on meeting the needs of people and respecting nature, in the present and for future generations.

13. As a context for interrelations, the World Social Forum seeks to strengthen and create new national and international links among organizations and movements of society, that - in both public and private life - will increase the capacity for non-violent social resistance to the process of dehumanization the world is undergoing and to the violence used by the State, and reinforce the humanizing measures being taken by the action of these movements and organizations.

14. 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 in building a new world in solidarity.

Approved and adopted in São Paulo, on April 9, 2001, by the organizations that make up the World Social Forum Organizating Committee, approved with modifications by the World Social Forum International Council on June 10, 2001.

http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br...ge=2&id_menu=3

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It went really well. A friend of mine is there. It's considered a better version of the UN. Some of the goals were delineated in the article below:


RIO DE JANEIRO - The World Social Forum could become a victim of its own success, as loud calls for translating ideas and talk into action and practical results threaten to generate divisions and frustration.

Portuguese Nobel literature laureate Jos Saramago expressed that tension when he called Friday for turning the World Social Forum (WSF) into an instrument for action based on concrete proposals and ideas with broad support, rather than a Mecca for an annual pilgrimage by the Left to engage in discussions and debates on utopias.

Saramago, who for the first time took part in the global gathering (whose fifth edition ended Monday), joined 18 personalities with close ties to the WSF Saturday to release the Porto Alegre Manifesto, which takes its name from the southern Brazilian city where four editions of the WSF have been held, including this year's.

The 19 intellectuals who produced the Manifesto, made up of 12 proposals that as a whole give sense to the building of another possible world, clarify that they are not speaking in the name of the WSF, but in a strictly personal capacity.

However, they say they have made a synthesis of 12 recommendations, out of the innumerable proposals presented during the global gathering, that, if they were applied, would permit citizens to at last seize control again of their future.

But the fact that most of the authors of the Manifesto have been prominent participants in the WSF since the very start, and that many of them are members of the international organizing committee, could give the impression that the document represents a common position assumed by the Forum. It could even appear that the WSF, contrary to its very nature, has acquired a politburo.

Among the signatories are Argentine writer and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Souza Santos, French editor of Le Monde Diplomatique Bernard Cassen, Egyptian economist Samir Amin, U.S. sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein and Pakistani writer Tariq Ali.

Seven of the recommendations concern the economy: the cancellation of the public debt owed by countries of the developing South; the taxation of financial transactions and weapons sales; full employment and social protection; the dismantling of tax havens; fair trade; food sovereignty and security through small-scale agriculture; and the prohibition of patents on knowledge and living organisms and the privatization of water.

The remaining five are an in-depth democratization of international organizations; guaranteeing the right to information and the right to inform; the dismantling of foreign military bases; fighting for public policies against all forms of discrimination; and putting an end to destruction of the environment, especially in the area of climate change.