Challenges of the World Social Forum 2011 in Dakar
- Opinión
The International Council (IC) of the World Social Forum (WSF) decided today, 8 May
Various kinds of doubts had been expressed in previous IC meetings about the conditions for organizing a WSF in
Even if there has never been a formal decision to always keep holding the main WSF events every two years, in practice this is the rhythm the forum process has had for some years now. After the Porto Alegre WSF in 2005, which was the fifth consecutive WSF global event organized annually, there was a polycentric (decentralized) experiment in 2006, held in
As the decisions of the WSF International Council tend to take quite some time to circulate, I decided to make some brief initial reflections on the decision. These are based on my involvement in the IC since its inception in 2001 as well as conversations and interviews with some key people during this IC meeting held in
Learning from Nairobi
As some of the critical questions about organizing the WSF event in Africa have had to do with the experience of the previous global WSF event held in the continent, I talked today to Edward Oyugi, who was one the key organizers of the Nairobi WSF in 2007.
Edward seemed optimistic about the Dakar WSF, because it will benefit from the experience of various previous WSF events in Africa, including the Nairobi WSF in 2007, the polycentric WSF held in Bamako in 2006 and various events of the African Social Forum process, most recently in Niger in 2008. There are also plans to hold a thematic social forum event in
Differences with the Nairobi WSF preparations mentioned by Edward included a stronger focus in the world and in
One more novelty will probably be the increasingly strong focus on the environmental and climatic questions. Various Nomadic groups that are particularly vulnerable to environmental crises were already present in
I also believe the Belem WSF where there was much focus on the importance of learning from the indigenous ways of living to confront the environmental crisis, has strengthened the capacity of the WSF process to take into account groups that have been previously excluded from the agenda-setting of the process. This capacity was already significantly strengthened by the presence of dalit groups in the WSF 2004 organized in Mumbai.
The Dakar Decision
Making the decision to hold WSF
In the following IC meetings, there were ambiguous and tense moments when African participants demanded a stronger commitment of the IC as a whole to organizing the WSF in
In the Belem IC meeting, organized in February 2009, it became more or less clear how complicated and embarrassing for the IC it would be to decide to organize WSF 2011 anywhere outside
As recounted by Taoufik Ben Bella today, within the African process there were initially four main possible host countries for the African WSF:
In
Within the State, Without the State
One of the doubts about the conditions for the WSF process in various parts of
In his initial presentation to the IC plenary, as “representative of the Senegalese social movements”, Demba stated that “all” Senegalese social movements are behind the application to hold the WSF there. Even if it would be naïve (if not scary) to assume that such an absolute consensus could ever be formed, I have not heard of any major social movements in
In any case, the relationship of the movements with the state is likely to be different in
In
Of course, I need to add, this may also imply the risk that the relationship of the WSF organizers with the state may become too close, which is one of the doubts that have been expressed about the possibility of organizing the WSF in places like Dakar. Close relationship with the state has its pros and cons, and much depends on the capacity of the social movements to act autonomously in different contexts, whether with more or with less hostile government. As such, and with various contextual differences, this question has also been present in other places where the WSF has been organized with at least some support from the local state, including
According to Demba, the state authorities want the WSF to be held there because they consider it an “honor to the democratic nature of
When talking about the government, it is useful to distinguish between local authorities and the national (or federal) state. Demba pointed out that the municipal government of
One of the ways through which the organizing process might increase its autonomy vis-à-vis the Senegalese government is the creation of a South-based transnational organizing committee for the Dakar WSF. This initiative, announced by Taoufik, was also commented approvingly by Virginia Vargas, who in general tends to be critical of the attempts of assumedly progressive states to control the WSF. It remains to be seen how this and other new proposals will function in practice, but today it does seem that the process is advancing through learning.
Money, Culture and Power
One of the main challenges for most forums has been financial. The question of how the Dakar WSF will be financed was not discussed much in the plenary sessions of the Rabat IC. It seems that the Finance Commission of the IC did not have possibilities to meet properly in
Even if there exists a proposal to rely on significant South-South networks in the organizing process toward
During the first years of the WSF process, questions of finance were often seen as simply technical issues. In recent years, more attention has been paid to the political dimension of finance, the links between money and power, and hopefully even more so in the preparations for this next forum in
As was pointed by some participants of the Rabat IC, we should not rely on overly dichotomous conceptions of the North-South cleavages. One of the big challenges in this context is the civilizational one.
In the assessments of the Nairobi WSF, much attention was paid to the presence of fundamentalist or reactionary church-based organizations that had positions that many feminist organizations found in outrageous violation of the WSF Charter of Principles. Some, such as Virginia Vargas, have expressed concern about the possibility that such Islamist organizations that might have similarly intolerant attitudes toward, for instance, reproductive rights could have presence in the Dakar WSF. Its seems the best way to deal with these dilemmas is to try to follow the Charter of Principles in defining what kind of organizations are supposed to participate in the WSF process.
Islam, however, is an example of a theme in which the Forum process should not assume simplistic dichotomies. As the existence of a growing number of European Muslims, it is by no means a purely North-South issue. The Dakar WSF could present an opportunity for the forum process to tackle complicated politico-cultural questions related to coloniality and Eurocentrism, for example as regards Islam.
All in all, the feelings in the Rabat IC about the challenges of organizing the WSF
- Teivo Teivainen is a member of the Network Institute for Global Democratization
Source: Global Democracy News and Ideas, Special Report May 2009, NIGD.
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