IICPH Newsletter  /  Fall/Winter 2002-2003

The growing tension over trade based globalization, which has favoured the rich transnational corporations, has been widespread. There have been major protests in every city where the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, G 8, or World Economic Forum is held. Some of these have turned violent, for example, in Seattle and Quebec City, often because of police over-reaction. Most recently on 9 November, the protests were in Italy, amid considerable tension because at the last Italian meeting one of the peaceful demonstrators was killed by the police. These demonstrations are not made by a group of people who run from one place to another. Rather, the movement of these global decision making bodies from place to place has allowed local opposition to be expressed. The protest is local everywhere on the globe!

Less visible than the protest movement, is a movement of positive energy, building up an alternative vision of the global village, designed to help people rather than corporations. It is not that business and work are bad. It is just that a global plan designed to be good for business has turned out to be very bad for people! I would like to give some basic information on the positive efforts to build a just society, so that when you hear of this phenomenon in the TV or newspapers (though it rarely gets reported) you will recognize it!

The positive global initiative is called the World Social Forum. The name was deliberately chosen to demonstrate its focus as different from the World Economic Forum. It first met as a grass root meeting in 2001. Its praxis has been: “keep it simple”. The issues addressed are peace and justice, environment, racism, and a global economy, which values human needs over accumulation. Since these needs are global, the solutions must be global. The 2001 meeting of the World Social Forum was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and it provided a space for pluralism open to lots of activity, workshops and discussion groups, without direction or orientation – and without final documents, abstract ideological disputes, political slogans, or other unproductive signs of old fashioned organizing.

Although powerful forces have been seeking to co-opt this movement, the movement has grown in its desire to form decentralized structures, which will give, rise to a “concrete program for society’s transformation”.

The second meeting at Porto Alegre, 29 January to 5 February 2002, was a colossal success. It drew more than 50,000 delegates from over 123 countries. It was held in Brazil during the same days as the World Economic Forum (WEF) in New York City (the WEF usually meets at a ski resort, Davos, in Switzerland) as a recognition of the September 11, 2001 tragedy. The Porto Alegre meeting consisted of 27 conferences, 96 seminars, and 652 workshops – all of which the participants themselves had proposed in advance, and then led. Thousands of ideas and inventive proposals came up, and this culminated in the forming of an Internet site to continue the dialogue. If you wish to become engaged in the positive thrust toward building a better world you can find the ideas at www.forumsocialmundial.org.br.

The World Social Forum’s proclamation of “another world” is no longer considered to be utopian. While the Social Forum met in Brazil, the World Economic Forum, meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, was listening to Jeffrey Sachs, noted US economist, telling them that the politics of rich nations caused some 25,000 deaths from starvation among the poor EVERY DAY! This daily death rate is nine times as many victims as were killed in the one time tragedy of the Twin Towers. While this was going on in New York, the United Nations specialized agencies and the European Union dispatched emissaries to address the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Although Kofi Annon, UN Secretary General, spoke at the Economic Forum in New York, he sent his deputy to Porto Alerge 2002 to hail that Forum as the planet’s “civil society”, and to make a bid for future UN cooperation. After the successful World Social Forum 2002, three major global organizations sought and achieved affiliation. One was the Jubilee 2000 Church group, which had lobbied for debt forgiveness during the jubilee year. Another was the Hague Peace Appeal, which we formed in the Netherlands in 1999, one hundred years after the first Hague Conference for peace. The third major group to join was the People’s Health Forum, which is the international grass root organization of health workers from 93 countries. Since I helped to form the Hague Peace Appeal and the People’s Health Forum (which met in Bangladesh in 2000), and since our community belongs to Jubilee 2000 – I feel well attached to the World Social Forum.

Plans are underway for the World Social Forum (WSF) to meet in Porto Alegre again in 2003, and in India in 2004. Its organizers (many of whom I know personally and respect) insist that WSF is NOT A NEW ORGANIZATION, but is conceived as “a process, not as an event”. There are now 60 member organizations, plus many individual members. I belong to the “Health Circle” (a list serve), which will be feeding information into the process. You too could get involved. There are continental meetings being held, and regional seminars in many different locations in preparation for the WSF 2003.

Love, Rosalie Bertell