World Social Forum 2007

World Social Forum 2007 – Nairobi

World Social Forum 2007 – Nairobi

François Houtart (*)

February 11, 2007

Source: Choike.org @ http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/5352.html

The World Social Forum has been organized in 2001, at a moment of full hegemony of the Neo-liberal phase of capitalism, as a counterpart to the World Economic Forum of Davos, which every year is the meeting of the principal economic powers of the world. Seven years after the beginning of the Social Forums we are facing a new situation. The neo-liberal system is on the defensive, in spite of still triumfant discourses, of measures of adaptation to new situations, like the struggle against poverty, and in spite of disposing still an enormous power of decision.

A series of failures are more and more visible ecological failures, with the over-exploitation of natural resources; economic failures, like the project of Free trade zone of the Americas (ALCA); military failures like in Irak. All this would not have been possible without a series of resistances: new political agendas, in particular in Latin America, strong resistance against wars of aggression in the Middle East, convergence of social movements and progressive NGOs in protest movements around the world and in the Social Forums.

The contribution of the Social Forums in this general framework is at the same time specific and global. Being convergence points between movements and organizations of the whole world, representing various sections of the victims of the system, they have mobilized hundred of thousands people during the 7 years of their existence, through world, continental, national and thematic meetings. The main achievements may be resumed in four points.

First they have greatly contributed to the development of a new collective consciousness. From "there is no alternative (to capitalist market) " as pronounced by Mrs Tatcher, to "another world is possible", means a profound cultural shift. This is of course a process, which has to be continued, taking its time to be a reality in the various parts of the world and in the different social groups. The second achievement has been the constitution or the strengthening of networks. Via Campesina, for instance, assembling more than 100 peasant's movements around the world, has been consolidated thanks to the Forums. New networks have been constituted, on fiscality, between lawyers defending leaders of social movements, etc.

The third result is to have been a part of the forces who have contributed to the failures of the neo-liberal system. It is thanks to the Social Forums that a global manifestation gathered in mote than 600 cities in the world some 15 million people against the war in Irak. Finally, one important contribution of he Forums has been the creation of a new dynamics of functioning, not as "vanguardism", but on a democratic basis and accepting plurality.

The Nairobi Forum has been a step in this general direction. It has helped to integrate more Africa in the general trend and also for the non Africans to get a better understanding of the African situations. It allowed understanding that Africa is not the forgotten continent or the marginalised one as commonly thought, but well the most integrated continent inside the process of globalization, as a periphery of global capitalism. It has been the opportunity of discovering the profound suffering of the misery of many, but also the extraordinary capacity of survival of the African people, their sense of hospitality and their joy in spite of the hardships of existence. Many have been impressed by the importance of religion in their cultural expressions and for their social commitments.

The Nairobi Forum has been like the preceding ones, and perhaps even more, an "open space" for all those who wanted to organize an activity within the framework of the basic chart. Several of the last day convergences have been a success, allowing the meeting of various types of movements and organizations. It must be emphasized that the organization of the meeting in one specific area, the main stadium of Nairobi, very intelligently reorganized, has helped very much the participation and the contacts.

However two social trends have been playing a role in the actual realization of the 2007 World Forum, who were not specific to the African situation, but perhaps accentuated by the concrete context. . The first one is a certain lack of clarity about the objectives of the Forums. The desire of a large opening to all forms of resistances joined to the time factor (7 years of existence) have perhaps weakened the perception of the real goals. In the chart of basic principles, it is clearly said that the movements and organizations meeting in the Social Forums are the ones struggling against neo-liberalism, against the world hegemony of capital and in search of alternatives. It is not sure that all the participant entities were really aware of it.

The second factor has been the fact that the most powerful organizations from a financial point of view, have been able to occupy a larger space, which means more activities, than others with less means. It is not necessarily a policy of domination, but a social law which indicates the necessity of certain rules to avoid that the "law of the market" affect also the full liberty of expression, which is central in the definition of the Forums.

More specifically it has been noted that the weakness of popular social movements in Kenya has inevitably accentuated a certain commercialization of the Forum. The lack of volunteers obliged to have recourse to commercial firms, which did not always comply with their contracts (translations and installations, for instance). The entry fee for Kenyans (happily lifted at the beginning of the first day) and the price of food were real obstacles for the participation of the poor. .

The Forums as open spaces must go on. If the International Council decided to hold them every two years, it is for very obvious reasons. It is a very heavy task to organize such encounters, time and financial means not being easy to mobilize. But in order not to loose world visibility and to assure the parallelism with Davos, a simultaneous activity will be organized in the whole world during the alternative years. In 2008 it will be the 26 and 27 of January . The choice of the place for the 2009 Forum has not yet be decided, but several candidatures have been proposed, among others Salvador de Bahia in Brazil, being the place of major implantation of the negro population.

The Forums are points of encounter and exchanges, like it was affirmed before and they have an important role to play in their plural character. They are also places of promotion for network. As such their existence itself has had a political impact. However they are neither the place of elaborating systematically the critical thinking, neither the organ for planning actions. Therefore various initiatives have been taken parallel or complementaries.

A first one has been an essay of synthesis of what had been the main orientations of the World Forums. It was called the Manifesto of Porto Alegre. It was not a document of the Forum, but an initiative taken within the Forum by a group of intellectuals. A second one has been the creation of the movement "In Defense of Humanity", in Mexico in 2004. It regroups intellectuals (meaning by this the ones being able to take a critical distance towards reality), artists and journalists, more specifically from Latin America, the USA and Canada and some from Europe. They recall the urgency of the situation in a world destroyed physically and socially by the predominance of capital.

The Bamako appeal, redacted by a group of more than 300 persons, at the eave of the World Social Forum, decentralized in Bamako (the other sessions being Caracas and Karachi), in 2005, has been an effort to add to the analysis of the great questions of mankind today, a dimension of alternatives and strategies. The World Forum for Alternatives which had take the initiative, organized in Nairobi 10 different activities on the base of the appeal.

Finally the Assembly of Social Movements, which meets inside the Forums since 2002, is redacting a document, which is not of the Forum, but made by the Movements present in the Forum and is proposing a certain number of common actions. His has been the case in Nairobi also, with an important participation, namely of African Movements who expressed strong opinions and revealed a high degree of analysis.

All this responds to the question: how to pass from a collective consciousness to collective actors? Indeed, reality does not change only by increasing consciousness, even if it is indispensable, but well by the construction of new relationships of power. The accumulation of strength is indispensable at this effect. In several Latin American countries the experience of the Social Movements has been convincing for the defeat of ALCA or the opposition against privatizations. Similar experiences have been made in Africaand in Asia. As said already, one of the concrete effects of the Forums has been the creation of networks, which of course are oriented towards action.

For the future, many tasks remain to be achieved. The first one is to increase the collective consciousness, not only geographically and in the various social sectors of society, but also from a qualitative point of view. It is not enough to recognize and condemn from an ethical viewpoint the excesses and abuses of capitalism. It is necessary to come to the awareness that it is the logics itself of the capitalist system which is at the root of such consequences. This is progressively understood by the victims. It is a process, which cannot be imposed from outside, but discovered by an internal analysis.

A second necessity for the future is to delineate what is the "other world possible"? Otherwise it remains a generous idea without content. Much has been achieved in this area by the participants of the Forums, but a serious work of concretization remains to be done. There is no question of coming with an imposed doctrine, but well to systematize the general awareness and the main areas of action. Four main orientations may be indicated, corresponding to the principal axis of human reality:

    * Sustentable use of natural resources, which means a new culture of the relations between human beings and nature, from exploitation to symbiosis.

    * Predominance of use value over exchange value, meaning a new philosophy of the economy, the capitalist system giving exclusive priority to the market.

    * Full democracy, representative and participative in the political field, but also in all social relations, being of gender or of production.

    * Interculturality, meaning the participation of all cultures, knowledge, philosophies, religions in the construction of societies, on the base of the three first principles.

No doubt that all those four axes have to be concretized an complemented. This will be a collective process, where the Forum may play a role of accelerating the exchanges of knowledge and of experiences.

Finally the question of alternatives and of strategies, also remain to be treated. One of the contributions of the Forums has been the awareness that alternatives exist, in all sectors of collective human life: ecological, economical, political and cultural, but also at all levels: utopia or long range, middle and short terms. The problem is the political will to achieve them and to know which social forces able to exercise the necessary pressures for new experiments and for political decisions. Strategies on the base of the organization of the victims, before any negotiation with the powers are also a fundamental theme to be envisaged. The organization of networks has been an achievement, but the organization of networks of networks remain to be envisaged.

The Forums are a process, based on existing action, accompanied by a critical thinking. Both are necessary to promote the steps of the construction of "another world". This is for sure a long a difficult journey, full of struggles and contradictions, but also a great source of hope.

(*) François Houtart is director of CETRI (Centre Tricontinental) a Belgian non-governmental organization. He is a catholic priest and a scholar. He was an expert for the Vatican Council II. Theoligian of the liberation, he founded "Alternatives Sud" magazine and is one of the initiators of the World Social Forum. As a sociologist he wrote more than forty books. He is the head of the International League for the Liberation of the Peoples.