Mario Lubetkin, IPS Director General

By Mario Lubetkin (*)

Rome, Mar (IPS TerraViva) Paradoxically, just as history is proving the World Social Forum right in many of its predictions and analyses, the major media, those “shapers of public opinion”, are not increasing but in fact sharply decreasing their coverage of it. This silent treatment is a clear obstacle to the expansion of the WSF and a cause of real concern for many of its innumerable organisers and participants.

This situation was recognised in the final February 10 declaration by the Social Movements of the WSF, which concluded that the forum must undertake “a battle of ideas, in which we cannot move forward unless there is a democratisation of communication.”

It is curious that ten years ago journalists from around the world flocked to Porto Alegre to cover the WSF debates, which were given broad coverage in print and on television.

It could be argued that this was simply a result of the novelty of the forum and its flood of activists proclaiming, “another world is possible” while the rest of the world careened blindly towards disaster.

The surprise was greater still when the following year, in 2002, certain members of the WSF, where attendance rose steadily, were elected presidents of their countries -like Luis Inacio Lula Da Silva in Brazil.

But these developments, it would seem, were moving contrary to the currents of history. In the same period, with the exception of certain slips -like the popping of the so-called dot.com bubble and the subsequent collapse of 4854 Internet companies between 2000-2003- capitalism, and especially financial capitalism, was charging full steam ahead. It outstripped the real economy, swelled the Gross World Product and international trade, and generated massive earnings for its businesses -insurance companies and banks, especially investment banks- giving the impression that the good times would never end.

From its first years the WSF denounced with tenacity and rigour the elements of the reigning neoliberal ideology that would lead to global disaster: the so-called Washington Consensus that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was imposing on countries of the South, extreme liberalisation, blind faith in the market as the ideal arbiter of the economy, rejection of any regulation especially of the financial firms which were conducting massive levels of speculation. The ruin that resulted is plain to see all around us.

One might think that, since history proved the WSF right, the media might have grown curious about the prescient arguments and predictions of the Forum. But the opposite happened: in recent years, particularly since the global depression struck in 2008, the presence of media at the forum has dropped continuously.

What was more logical was the parallel decline in the media’s coverage of the World Economic Forum, which saw its fundamental postulates proved terribly wrong.

Of course, part of this contradiction has to do with the characteristics and errors of the WSF itself. The analysis of this matter is important given that the Forum constitutes the largest agglomeration of civil society in the world. Four aspects deserve close study:

-The structure of the forums consists of numerous simultaneous meetings on different themes. Thus the journalists must choose which they would like to attend and may find it difficult to make an assessment of the forum as a whole. This is accentuated by the organisational problems of the forum, which were particularly evident in the last meeting in Dakar. This dispersed nature of the event can thus distract attention from the ideas that it generates, including the best suggestions for solutions to the world’s problems.

-In general the journalists who cover the forum are inadequately prepared. Providing good coverage of specialised debates requires a high level of expertise on fields ranging from ecology, finance, minority rights, and philosophical, political, theological, sociological discussions.

-The WSF has thus far lacked a true communications strategy. Despite its extraordinary capacity to draw people from civil society, its management and organisational staff is limited and lacks resources. It could produce better results if it recognised the importance of having and implementing a communications strategy.

-The operation of the mass media has changed dramatically in this decade and requires a rethinking that factors in the new modes of exchange made possible by the Internet and electronic devices, social networks, and major alternative media like Al Jazeera and blogs like the Huffington Post, which have shown serious interest in this subject.

The coincidence of the Dakar Forum and the toppling of the regimes in North Africa has charged the debate and all groups linked to the WSF and challenged them to demonstrate the power and potential of those proposing to build “another world” using new forms of civil organisation and communication.

(*) Mario Lubetkin is Director-General of IPS news agency.

NEW YORK, Feb 14, 2011 (IPS) – More than 200 years ago, one of the United States’ founding presidents, Thomas Jefferson, famously remarked: “Every generation needs a new revolution.” Today, his words are more relevant than ever, as young people across the world mark 2011 as a year of change.

Judging by the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and the strong turnout at last week’s World Social Forum (WSF) in Dakar, Senegal, activism is alive and well.

For a wrap-up on this year’s WSF and some insight into the recent uprisings, IPS spoke with Boaventura de Sousa Santos, author and professor of sociology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.

Q: What were the highlights of this year’s WSF?

A: In spite of organisational difficulties, this was a successful WSF for various reasons. First, Africa’s problems and Africa’s contribution to the world were at the centre of the WSF, precisely at the same time as the people in Cairo celebrated liberation and showed new ways of struggling for it. This focus on Africa became a source of inspiration for the U.N. International Year for People of African Descent, just beginning.

Second, an unprecedented amount of time was allocated to convergence meetings among social movements aiming at jointly planned collective actions.

Third, the renewal of the WSF is definitely on the agenda. The objective is to allow for political demands to be advanced globally in the name of important sectors of the WSF – without compromising the inclusive nature of the world meetings every two years – and to strengthen the self- education and training across national borders.

Q: From Marxism to La Via Campesina, social movements have changed and evolved over the years. What do you think is the most successful approach to making real change in the world?

A: Tunis’s and Cairo’s uprisings are showing that a paradigmatic change in oppositional militancy is under way. If until now the central question for progressive politics was how to articulate progressive parties with progressive social movements and NGOs, the new central question is how to articulate progressive parties and social movements, on one side, with unorganised citizens, on the other.

The latter, mostly young people, whom the organised civil society viewed as apolitical, brainwashed by mass consumption and mass media – in sum, lost for social causes – are showing that real change in the world occurs when a threshold is reached beyond which politics becomes equated with human life and human dignity.

Social movements have not reflected on the conditions, times and spaces of such threshold for the simple reason that they didn’t believe that such a threshold existed. For them, being organised meant – and still means – to be on the right side, and being unorganised, on the wrong side.

The real change in the world will occur when multiple Cairos will occur synchronically around the world, all different and all similar. The newest social movements will focus on their relations with the unorganised society and on the intercultural translation that will make possible insurgent transnational aggregation without global homogeneity.

Q: What can we learn from the recent global financial crisis?

A: That capitalism is becoming more destructive than ever by squeezing more labour from workers that have a job and more subservience from those that don’t, by resorting to wage theft, by destroying all remnants of the social contract, by silencing, through the financial crisis, all the other crises – energetic, environmental, intergenerational, civilisational crises facing humankind.

We also learn that as long as the crisis is being “resolved” by those that caused it, the destruction will continue. At least, until when many Cairos emerge around the world, based on different grievances but united in the same struggle for social justice and democratic accountability.

Q: Do you think there is the possibility that the U.N. could be strengthened as a world parliament?

A: We should struggle, not for spatially inflated forms of representative democracy, but rather for sub-national, national and regional articulations between representative and participatory democracy. In some cases, these two forms of democracy should be joined by communitarian democracy, as stated in the Constitution of Bolivia of 2009. In other words, we need demo-diversity as much as we need biodiversity.

Q: Neoliberal policies prioritise money, profit and the free market as drivers of development. What does “development” mean to you? And what, as a worldwide community, do you think we should prioritise?

A: The concept of development emerged to legitimate its opposite: underdevelopment. All of a sudden the vast majority of countries of the world were labelled underdeveloped and the label reached much beyond their economies. Underdeveloped were also their institutions, their laws, their cultures.

The way out for all of them was to follow the path of the very few developed countries, that is, to obey the rules set by the latter for international relations at all levels. Concomitantly, the possibility of multiple modernities was precluded and modernity became, by definition, Western modernity. Indeed, the other “other” of development was not underdevelopment but rather socialist revolution.

Development is at heart a Cold War concept. Having this in mind, it is almost impossible if not self-defeating, to try to conceive of alternative conceptions of development. We need rather alternatives to development.

One of them could be the quechua concept of Sumak kawsay which, according to the Constitution of Ecuador of 2008, should preside over the socio-economic regulation of society. It means roughly buen vivir in Spanish or living well, in English. Living well means an aspiration of individual and collective flourishing that rather than setting us apart from nature – as inherent to the concept of development- conceives of nature as part of human society in such a way that human rights and the rights of nature are the two sides of the same struggle for social emancipation.

As the year of the Rio plus 20 (The UN Conference on Sustainable Development of 2012) approaches, giving credibility to the concept of Sumak kawsay may be a good way of indicating our priorities.

Q: The world is growing at an unprecedented rate. How can we handle this growth while being responsible to both people and the environment?

A: Food sovereignty and what it entails is the solution.

(END)

DAKAR, Feb 11 (TerraViva) – It started with a march through the streets of Dakar, grew with calls for a new global era and is ending with a challenge to activists to take the call for global change beyond the World Social Forum into the world.

Marching in the streets of Dakar. Credit: Abdullah Vawda/IPS

Addressing tens of thousands who marched through the Senegalese capital to mark the start of the Forum, Bolivian president Evo Morales called for a programme of social struggle to build a new world.

“There must be awareness and a mobilisation to put an end to capitalism and clear away invaders, neocolonialists and imperialists [...] I support the popular uprisings in Tunisia and in Egypt. These are signs of change,” said Morales.

It was a fitting coincidence that after thirty years in power in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak finally bowed to more than two weeks of mass protest and stepped down on the same day as the Forum drew to a conclusion.

The struggle in Egypt encapsulates many of the issues that were prominent in Dakar: deepening poverty made worse by the global financial crisis; religious conflict threatening a minority; issues of gender inequality bolstered by both culture and the law; and a people alienated from their democratic curtailment of individual rights and freedoms. All this in large measure thanks to billions of dollars of United States support for an oppressive security apparatus.

Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told delegates liberal doctrines imposed on the world’s poorest countries no longer have a place in modern societies.

“In South America, but above all in the streets of Tunis and Cairo and many other African cities, a new hope is being born. Millions of people are rising up against the poverty to which they are subjected, against the domination of tyrants, against the submission of their countries to the policies of the big powers,” said Lula.

In its eleventh year, the Forum remains a space for open and honest debate. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade did not hesitate to declare himself a supporter of the market economy which most here reject, and threw down a challenge to participants regarding their engagement with established global institutions such as the United Nations.

“If you who are here, if you had supported the idea, then Africa would already be on the Security Council. Since 2000, I have followed your movement and I still – excuse my frankness – ask myself this question: have you succeeded in changing the world at the global level?”

It’s a challenge that participants in the WSF take very seriously. Kenyan social justice activist Onyango Oloo was a key organiser of the 2007 edition of the Forum in Nairobi; he was unable to attend this year, but he suggested that the building of another world is already begun, away from the fleeting attention of the media.

The WSF is a place where those builders can meet each other directly. Organisers said 75,000 people from 132 countries attended, to share their experiences of injustice and resistance, to test each others’ analyses and return home newly-inspired.

For activist Beverley Keene, from Buenos Aires, holding the forum in Africa was important. “It’s our time to learn from each other and assess the impact that the financial crisis and the looting of the people’s minerals have on livelihoods.”

Lebanese participant Ounsi Daif said he had inspiring exchanges with people from Tunisia and Palestine as well as with students at the university that hosted the WSF. “I discovered the realities of West Africa, which I did not know. I discovered the inequalities, I discovered also the neo-liberal policies, I discovered a lot of things.”

Anietie Ewang, from the Niger Delta, said it had been an eye-opening experience for her. “An opportunity to re-strategise, to take the strategies of all the other participants that you’ve come to know about from their testimonies and go in and continue the fight with all the enthusiasm in the world.”

“The first and most important thing that one can learn from Tunisia is that when the people say no to oppression, then everything is possible,” said Tunisian Azza Chamkhi.

The wide-open optimism of Chamkhi’s statement captures both the broad appeal of the World Social Forum and what is frustrating about it.

“The WSF has a tendency to spin its own wheels, so to speak, because of the inherent limits of its slogan and motto,” says U.S. scholar Joel Kovel, a co-author of the Eco-socialist Manifesto. “’Another World is Possible’, repeated over and over, becomes discouraging because the shape of that other world is never really spelled out.”

Yet the people of Tunisia and Egypt – perhaps like South Africans, Iranians, Chileans, or African-Americans before them – find themselves on the threshold of a new world.

“The dictator is gone, but the dictatorship is still there,” said Chamkhi.

Thousands of activists are departing Dakar to pull it up, root and branch.

(END/2011)

DAKAR, Feb 11 (TerraViva) – Delegates attending the WSF in Dakar have affirmed their support and active solidarity with the people of Tunisia, Egypt and the Arab world.

Protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Credit: Mohamed Omer/IPS

The social movement assembly of the World Social Forum adopted a declaration that said “the Arab world has risen up to the demand a true democracy and build the people’s power.

“Their struggles are lighting the path to another world, free from oppression and exploitation,” the statement reads.

“Inspired by the struggles of the peoples of Tunisia and Egypt, we call for March 20th to be made a day of international solidarity with the uprisings of the Arab and African people, whose advance supports the struggles of all peoples.”

Thousands of delegates attended the assembly at the main venue at Cheikh Anta Diop University. Loud applause broke out as the statement was read out.

Some delegates had expressed concerned that the events in North Africa were not granted enough time for discussion time at the Forum. Others said the assembly’s statement goes a long way in showing solidarity to the people of Tunisia and Egypt.

Following the reading out of the statement, Mamdouh Habashi, an Egyptian activist who had spent several days at the focal point of the Egyptian protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square just before coming to Dakar, addressed the assembly.

“The revolution is not yet over. Mubarak is still in power,” he said.

Habashi said the “people of Egypt are at war with the imperialists and need the support of the African people and the world”. Change in Egypt, he said, is an earthquake taking place that will change the world. He underlined that pressure must be put on countries that still supported Mubarak.

Picking up the theme, Habashi’s fellow Egyptian and activist, the public intellectual Samir Amin, echoed these sentiments but urged activists to find ways to offer effective solidarity.

“It is not enough to show solidarity with the people of Egypt, we have to also change the U.S. and other powers. It is only through doing this that we can truly help the people of Egypt.”

When she took the floor, feminist and activist Pumi Mtetwa said the social movements of South Africa and Southern Africa also support the people of Egypt and Tunisia.

“Unity in struggle and struggle in unity,” she declared. “We pledge our solidarity to the people and support the assembly’s declaration”.

Habiya Sheg from Algeria said, “The people of Egypt have taken the decision [to resist] and will not go back and this is about political sovereignty.”

Thousands of delegates have been urged to support a march on the Egyptian embassy in Dakar at the end of the WSF’s final proceedings.

(END/2011)

NORAH MATOVU-WINYI. Credit:Courtesy of FEMNET

Rousbeh Legatis interviews NORAH MATOVU-WINYI, Executive Director, African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET)

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11, 2011 (IPS/TerraViva) – “The agenda for women’s rights and empowerment in each country must be supported by the political leadership,” says Norah Matovu-Winyi, Executive Director, African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET).

FEMNET is a membership based Network, mandated to facilitate the sharing of information, experiences, ideas and strategies among African women’s NGOs in order to strengthen women’s capacity to participate effectively in the development process.

In future World Social Forums “there is need to support more women to participate in the dialogues,” Matovu-Winyi said. Women learn a lot from each other and in many instances discover that their struggles are the same despite coming from different continents.

Bringing women from different countries together to share ideas, experience and challenges “is the greatest solidarity mechanism for women,” Norah Matovu-Winyi told IPS.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: What are the most pressing issues for women in Africa?

A: Increasing poverty and its feminised characteristics continue to be a major challenge in Africa. Women and girls, especially in poor urban and rural communities, continue to live on less than one dollar and a half per day, with household capacity for income generation decreasing. This has worsened with the multiple crises including the global financial and economic meltdown, food insecurity and climate change and the fuel crisis which have all combined to impact the households in developing countries in ways that have left many women more vulnerable to poverty. The majority of African women have limited opportunities for realising their full potential in their lifetime.

Insecurity resulting from the wars and conflicts (intra-state, inter-state and within communities) in which women’s bodies have increasing become battlegrounds are causing havoc in the region.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is one of the biggest threats to human security and a daily nightmare for many women, girls, boys and men on the African continent.

Patriarchy is Africa’s dominant, organizing social system, in which women’s rights as citizens remain subordinated to the inferior social prescriptions for the female gender, which does not accord the same recognition to women and girls as to men and boys; and which does not equally tap into this resource for Africa’s development.

Q: Does the Social World Forum respond to the need of African women?

A: The World Social Forum (WSF) is an open and significant space for African women activists and feminists to meet and link with other social movements and civil society organisations that propagate another alternative world that is free of neo-liberalism and any form of imperialism. The thousands of people from all corners of the world brainstorm, share experiences and ideas; and identify key agenda items that they agree on how to harmonise for a better world.

During the 2011 WSF, FEMNET partnered with PANOS to organise the Gender and Media workshop, and attached two female journalists to the Flame of Africa Newspaper which was produced throughout the WSF. This was part of capacity building for the young journalists because they had the opportunity to challenge each other to demand for gender responsive media reporting, support each other to take up decision-making positions in the media and to utilise new information technologies in order to put the women’s agenda at the forefront in the global development processes. The main role of FEMNET in this partnership was to provide a gender perspective to coverage of issues during the WSF and also mobilise African women journalists to cover the WSF with a gender lens.

The WSF provided space for FEMNET as a regional organisation to work with other regional women’s organisations like WIDE (a Network of European women’s rights NGOs) and also AWID (a women’s rights NGO which covers Europe, Latin America and Africa).

As women’s NGOs from Africa, Latin America and Europe we used the WSF to engage with women from different parts of the world. We used the WSF to hold a consultation with women on the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, as part of preparing African women to engage in debate and discussions around aid and development effectiveness before the Fourth High Level Forum (HLF4) which will be held in Busan, Korea in Nov. 2011.

The WSF does in a way respond to the needs of African women because it provides space for women to articulate their issues and also find common ground on some issues. It also provides space for women to share experiences, challenges and best practices.

Q: Do you see enough political will bring change for African women?

A: Political will and/or political commitment is essential because leadership at the top enables things to move at all levels. For example in Rwanda, it is the political will that started moving the agenda for improved maternal health and care and this trickled down to the community level, where women were sensitised on the need to work together with government to change their health care seeking behaviours including addressing basic things like hygiene, sanitation and clean environment.

In Uganda, the President led the country in moving the agenda for HIV/AIDS from a personal/individual affair to a community/country business, that required each and everyone to play her/his role in its prevention, treatment and care. This resulted in increased awareness creating a culture of public acceptance of people living with HIV/AIDS and reducing stigma and improving access to medications.

To some extent we felt not enough political will among the leadership of Senegal to host the WSF.

For example most of the meetings were cancelled because there was no venue, despite an organisation paying for the venue prior to coming to the WSF. For example all women’s meetings were held in tents because authorities were not willing to give rooms within the University of Cheikh Anta Diop University, the venue of the WSF. The alternative venue (tents) also proved expensive for some women’s organisations who could not afford to pay for on-the-spot interpretation and interpretation equipment.

Political commitment/will must go along with the allocation of the required financial resources.

The agenda for women’s rights and empowerment in each country must be supported by the political leadership, but also the financial resources must be available to facilitate the much-needed change.

FEMNET believes that the African Women’s Decade (2010 – 2020) is a great opportunity for all African women to mobilise and organise themselves to create a critical mass at national, regional and sub-regional levels that will push for a common agenda – that of transformative change for women and girls of Africa.

(END)

Nnimmo Bassey

Nnimmo Bassey, the executive director of Friends of the Earth, hopes that this year’s World Social Forum will prove more than a talk shop.

“A great space for people to meet, for people to share ideas. Now we have to leave here with concrete ideas to take the struggle to the grassroots and amplify them. And globalise them,” he says.

“The harder we struggle, the quicker we’ll get the solution. We don’t have time to waste.”

The trade unionist says the continent’s workers faced serious problems long before the current world financial crisis and it is time for the continent to focus squarely on job creation.

Halifa Sallah. Credit: courtesy of Freedom Newspaper.

Ebrima Sillah interviews HALIFA SALLAH, researcher and sociologist

DAKAR, Feb 11 (TerraViva) – The final two days of the World Social Forum are devoted to working out shared positions on a range of issues. Academics taking part in a parallel forum organised by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, have been discussing the nature of social movements, liberation and how to achieve “the sovereignty of the people”.
Noted Gambian sociologist Halifa Sallah spoke to Ebrima Sillah. Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: What have the academics at the CODESRIA event been discussing?

A:  Africa must recognise that we have gone through one phase, and maybe we can help the world to conceptualise the other phase.

The first phase we went through is to create nations that are independent, that have a right to self-determination and independence. There was a democratic struggle to open the base for the public to intervene in participating in creating republics.

What we need to move on to is the second phase of the sovereignty of the people. From the sovereignty of nations to the sovereignty of the people, which will require the people themselves to be conscious that they are the depository of power, they are, they contain the sovereign will of nations. And therefore their civil, economic, political, social and cultural rights must be embedded in them, inviolable.

They must be conscious of how to transform that into policies, into programmes, into institutions, into instruments and various personalities – whether in academia or in the political terrain – must be able to enunciate what is necessary at the policy level, at the programme level to address people’s aspirations.

So African social movements must be conscious of this. We are not just copying, but we must see that our reality demands that we move to the second phase of national liberation, and that is the state that many parts of the world are in.

You will find economic achievement in China, but if you look at the civil, political, cultural situation, you will still have some big questions to address. And if you look at the Western world, there are still some economic questions, there are still some civil questions, there are still some issues of politics to address.

Q: What role for social movements in addressing these?

A: First, we must redefine what we mean by social movement. Unless we know what these are, we cannot proceed to determine what they should do.

There are perhaps three categories of social movements.

First you have fringe movements, where you have people who are often characterised as fundamentalists – Muslim, Christian, Jewish, whatever – coming from a religious base, and there are also ethnic fundamentalists of one sort or another.

These are people who by virtue of some grievances, group together and create a social movement, sometimes even a radical social movement and engage in militancy.

But if you were to ask them what ideas they have for solving the problems of a particular country or a particular  region, or the world, they would not be able to enunciate a concrete programme.

Then there are social movements for social reform, where systems have tried to subsist by ensuring they create a space for them, and those social movements become pressure groups. They can be NGOs, etc in given countries where they try to impact on government certain policies, so that those policies will serve the community as a whole.

And then are social movements for social transformation, the changing of the state. Those who feel that the state is no longer serving and no matter what pressure you bring to bear, the state can never deliver, either to eradicate poverty, or deliver to eradicate injustice. [For these social movements], there is need for social transformation.

Therefore it is necessary that we identify when [transformation] is needed, when reform is needed, and how to contain the fringe social movement so that there is more social inclusion.

Q: How does this kind of analysis address the core issues: of access to healthcare, access to education, access to clean drinking water and all other things that are of concern to the majority of people?

A: Clearly that was the emphasis is. That now the social movements must be concerned with social transformation, the transformation that will address the civil, political, economic, social and cultural needs of people. It must be global. It cannot be sectoral.

(END/2011)

DAKAR, Feb 10 (TerraViva) – The road to the large green tent is dusty and rather confusing, but once you get there you are immersed in a babel of women’s voices. The tent, hidden away in the wind and dust, some distance from the main World Social Forum events, has become the unofficial women’s tent at the WSF.It took a few days to establish itself, but it has become the place to go to hear women’s voices. Physical space has been a contentious issue following the cancellation of many of the venues, and gender activists led by the World March of Women felt the need to claim a site where women could speak freely without having to negotiate discursive space.

Both young and older activists checked in frequently here at this sometimes chaotic spot, with some women shouting passionately or playing drums, while others listened intently to the issues being discussed.

Marching at the opening of the World Social Forum. Credit: Abdullah Vawda/IPS

Under its green fabric, a colorful and vibrant debate has been bubbling, covering the plight of women in the conflict-struck region of Casamance in the south of Senegal,  gender-based violence, the difficulties in organising young women around issues of sexuality, HIV/AIDS and other challenges they face in patriarchal societies – and the perceived marginalisation of women’s issues at the World Social Forum itself.

Whilst some applauded the tent’s spirit, others worried that it stood as a symbol of women’s issues being marginalised in the wider context of the Forum.

The assembly where declaration is read has already come under fire that it might not  fully represent the voice of all women. perhaps at an event of this magnitude you will never get everyoen to agree on binding way forward

Fatima Aloo, a veteran Tanzanian activist and feminist, said the WSF has been a great platform for women who want to raise specific issues. “I have been impressed by the type of debates. For the first time, Africa is debating imperialism and the crisis of capitalism [and its effects] on the people.”

She said African women and their feminism have always been rooted on the continent. “I think the state of feminism is very much on the rise because African women have set their own agenda. It’s not been on anyone else’s terms.”

Not everyone agrees with Aloo’s assessment, however.

Amina Mama said most of the debates here about building Third World solidarity have “almost completely ignored what is happening with feminism and the women’s movement.

“We had people from Egypt interesting with very interesting presentations,” said the Nigerian feminist scholar and activist, “and they would list all the social forces that need to be mobilised – except the women’s movement.”

Mama, who chairs the board of the Global Fund for Women, contrasted the WSF experience with that of the African Feminist Forum held in Dakar in October 2010. “As a feminist – 30 years I’ve been involved with this – it concerns me that there’s still a parallelism going on. At time I felt as if i was in a time warp. I think that social movements have to take this up more seriously.”

This view is shared by Zimbabwean Tendai Makanza from the organisation ANSA (Alternatives to Neo-liberalism in Southern Africa ). “I think if you look at the number of events taking place at the WSF, I do not get the sense that gender or women’s issues are part of the discussion. It is very disappointing.”

The World March of Women was instrumental in establishing the green tent. The organisation is an international feminist action movement connecting grassroots groups working to eliminate the root causes of poverty and violence against women.

Brazilian Julia Di Giovanni, a WMW activist, admits that it has been difficult to organise events that focus on the women’s movement.

“We have had to work very hard to ensure grassroots voices are heard. We brought women from Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to talk about gender-based violence and impact of the military on women.

“This has been a main focus for WMW and the Forum provided a safe space for women the talk about the impact of violence.”

Italian activist Francesca Rossi told IPS that she found the the testimonies about gender-based violence and listening to African women’s voices rewarding.

“It is important to hear from grassroots groups what is happening on the ground. I found it informative and I want to salute the women of Africa. They are brave and should be supported in their different causes.”

Sara Longwe, a feminist activist from Zambia said that “Gender-based violence is still seen as a health and welfare issue. We have to talk about it from a power point of view. It is about power relations. Women are speaking about it and the laws in different countries cannot deal with the violence.”

Young women at the WSF said they felt excluded and marginalised.

Cristina Calvo Alamillo from the Mujeres Fundacion (Women’s Foundation) based in Madrid, Spain said, “Young women are not being heard at the WSF. But they too are fighting to ensure young women are heard or at least given the space to raise their concerns.”

Her organisation is hard at work to “ensure African and Spanish organisations work together to empower young women in order to strengthen their capacity”.

“Young women have plenty of ideas but its difficult because of societal pressure to either get married or to have children.”

“We want to help organisations to create space for young women to empower themselves.”

A young American student, Colleen Brewster, told IPS that she found the WSF interesting and the varied of debates taking place.

Despite the gains women have made towards gender equality, it seems women have had to fight hard to be heard at this year’s WSF.

Mama summed it up like this: “Coming to the WSF is a way of replenishing, and to challenge the brothers, remind them of what is happening to women and try to bring them along.

“It is the younger generation that I think has a grasp of the issues and we must help them run with it.”

The final days of the World Social Forum are devoted to “convergence workshops” which will try to produce common positions and pave the way forward on the thematic issues.

(END/2011)

Sylvia Borren. Credit:Courtesy of GCAP

Cléo Fatoorehchi interviews SYLVIA BORREN, co-chair of GCAP

NEW YORK, Feb 10, 2011 (IPS/TerraViva) – While the international community is now talking of a triple global crisis – food, climate and economic – a weeklong session of the World Social Forum (WSF) is coming to a close in Dakar, Senegal.

Countless organisations are participating, hoping to bring another world to life, one that is more focused on people’s lives than on economic profits.

The Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) is a leading civil society group in the WSF. Its co-chair Sylvia Borren discussed GCAP’s role at the forum and its evolution over the last decade, since the first gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January 2001.

Q: What do you expect from the current WSF in Dakar?

A: I expect that the food/water/climate crisis affecting large parts of Africa – caused by rich countries – will be high on the agenda. Our leaders are not solving this in the G8, G20 or in the U.N. ‘We the People’ will have to take leadership, and I expect new civil energy as well as new strategies to be the result of this WSF – certainly after the dramatic democratic movements using social media presently witnessed in the Arab world.

Q: What is the “other world” promoted by the WSF?

A: It is clear that the vast majority of the citizens in the world are looking for a just world where distribution of education, health, jobs and wealth is much more equitable and where ‘global common goods’ are agreed and managed, such as sustainable and just climate agreements.

However, the power is at this point still in the hands of rich minorities, an elite world class which interconnects banks, corporations, governments, corporate media and sometimes criminal networks.

Planetary or global citizenship is about organising as citizens to achieve new forms of value-driven, inclusive global democratic processes – in which not the banks and corporates get bailed out in a global financial crisis, but the people who pay the real price for something they did not cause: in and with their lives.

Q: Should the WSF constitute itself as a genuine body to have more power and influence on national policies?

A: WSF was set up to be a space in which social movements can meet, strategise and begin to organise their influence at the country and global level. This works very well. WSF itself would fall apart and lose its very significant role if it tried to become an institute or a movement with specific goals itself. It is the ‘global safe house’ for emerging civil action of many different sorts.

Q: Could you give me an example of an idea first promoted at the WSF, and then implemented successfully?

A: GCAP itself was launched at the WSF in 2005, and strengthened its network at subsequent WSFs, which lead to many concrete results such as a growing mobilisation around international poverty day – 173 million people joined in October 2009.

Concrete results at the national level include more government spending on education, health, social security, child benefits, support for people with disabilities etc. At the WSF in 2009, GCAP and others prepared the strategy towards the U.N. Climate Conference in December that year: GCAP organised Climate and Poverty Hearings/Tribunals in 18 countries – which have fed into concrete climate work at national and global levels.

Q: What is GCAP going to promote this year?

A: GCAP Senegal together with Civicus, UNMC, UNDP and others is holding panel discussions on how civil society can monitor governments in their promises to accelerate efforts to achieve and exceed the MDGs by 2015. Water and sanitation is a key subject for Africa as well as the soaring food prices.

And in the ‘World We Want statement’ GCAP has coordinated a combined global civil society vision for our fight against poverty and for justice in the world – which includes stopping violence against girls and women, mother and child mortality etc.

Q: What current challenges is GCAP facing?

A: GCAP had strong presence at the MDG summit at the U.N. in September 2010, and organised its Global Assembly there ending in an ambitious strategic plan. The challenge now is to implement the many aspects of this ‘The World We Want’ plan, to organise what is being done in which country and by which constituency group, and to find sufficient alliances as well as funding for that implementation – in a time that there are dramatic financial cutbacks in funding, right-wing backlash in some countries, and diminishing public spending in many countries because money was used for the bailout of the banks and corporates.

Q: Are you hopeful the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT), supported by GCAP, could resolve poverty in the world? Could the WSF have a positive impact on its adoption?

A: The proposed FTT can be an excellent tool to generate more money for poverty alleviation, education, health and job creation. By itself it will not resolve poverty. For that, many other things have to stop – unfair trade, dumping of subsidised agricultural products, violence against women, trafficking, CO2 emissions etc.

And many other things have to be distributed more justly – land, water, education, health, energy, jobs etc.; and deeper transformation is badly needed: in democratic processes in many countries – rich and poor – and in relationships between mankind and the environment and between women and men.

The WSF plays a facilitating role (in the adoption of the FTT). My expectation is that some sort of FTT will actually be adopted before the next WSF.

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