DEVELOPMENT: World Social Forum Grows, Diversifies in Third Year

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 16 (IPS) - The southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre this month will serve, once again, as the global capital of indignation and of dreams as it hosts the World Social Forum, Jan 23-28, which in its third year will be the largest and most diverse so far.

The organisers of this major annual gathering of social movements, non-governmental organisations, intellectuals and leftist groups seeking ”a better possible world” predict that this year's attendance will reach 100,000, double that of 2002.

Among this multitude, according to the preliminary registration -- closed a month ago --, 29,704 delegates representing 4,962 organisations from 121 countries will be sharing their ideas and experiences during the six-day event. Tens of thousands more will attend as spectators.

The World Social Forum (WSF) has held its annual meeting in Porto Alegre since the forum was founded, in 2001. Last year, 12,274 delegates from 4,909 organisations representing 123 countries were registered.

The WSF has gained fame as a gigantic festival of debates, panel discussions and workshops -- a source of frustration for enthusiastic participants, and for journalists, because it is impossible to attend all key meetings or to identify the threads of the debate cutting across the different events of the forum.

The diffuse and simultaneous nature of the Forum is a by- product of gigantism. On the agenda for this third WSF are 37 panels, 10 conferences, four roundtables of ”dialogue and controversy” and a mind-boggling 1,700 workshops and seminars.

Some of the 39 international figures invited to Porto Alegre to share their testimonies and ideas are Brazil's new environment minister Marina Silva, U.S. author Susan Sontag and Aleida Guevara, widow of Ernesto ”Che” Guevara. By Wednesday, half had confirmed they would attend the Porto Alegre gathering.

The debates each have seven or eight scheduled speakers and focus on the thematic pillars that have oriented the WSF since its inception. This year, however, the points have been reorganised and expanded -- now five instead of four -- to cover the growing concern about world peace.

The five areas organising the central questions of the WSF are: Democratic Sustainable Development; Principles and values, human rights, diversity and equality; Media, culture and counter- hegemony; Political power, civil society and democracy; Democratic world order, fight against militarism and promoting peace.

The 10 conferences, according to the methodology set up by the WSF International Council (comprising 112 organisations), will ”socialise the views and analyses to the broader public”, in order to strengthen the movement to build ”other worlds”.

In each conference, three or four personalities will present their opinions on specific issues related to the thematic areas.

One example is the conference ”Cinema and Politics: against the homogenisation of the imagination”, with filmmakers Fernando Solanas (Argentina), Citto Maselli (Italy) and Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran) presenting.

Among the innovations for WSF III are the roundtable discussions on polemical issues, in which the objective is to bring opposing opinions and visions to the forefront in order to reach a deeper analysis of the questions, says Sergio Haddad, member of the WSF Organising Committee and president of the Brazilian Association of Non-Governmental Organisations.

In the roundtable ”What kind of globalisation, and how should the world be governed?”, confirmed to participate are former president of Portugal, socialist Mario Soares, the director- general of the International Labour Organisation, Juan Somavía, and Nicolla Bullard, of the non-governmental Australian group Focus on the Global South.

The 1,700 seminars and workshops scheduled are organised mostly by civil society groups and constitute a sort of ”laboratory” for ”another possible world”, through the dissemination of ideas related to specific areas of of social change.

In addition to the events of the WSF there are numerous meetings taking place in parallel or just prior to the Forum. One such event is the International Youth Camp, where young people from around the world will gather for the six days of the WSF.

Taking place beforehand, Jan 19-23, will be forums of local authorities, parliamentarians, education experts, judges and union leaders, drawing tens of thousands of participants from around the globe.

Also slated is the Forum on Sexual Diversity, in which homosexuals, transvestites and transgender individuals will discuss strategies to defend their rights.

In Belem, capital of the northern Brazilian state of Pará, the Pan-Amazon Social Forum began Thursday, with representatives from the countries of the Amazon Basin sharing their experiences and drawing up a report of their specific problems, to be presented next week in Porto Alegre.

The WSF was inaugurated in January 2001 as a counterweight to the World Economic Forum, which each year since 1971 has brought together corporate executives, political leaders, economists and financiers in Davos, a small Swiss mountain city.

For this reason, the WSF is held on the same dates as the Davos Forum.

Some of the leaders of the Porto Alegre Forum have expressed disappointment in the new president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who announced his decision to participate in both the WSF, on Jan 24, and the Davos Forum, Jan 25-26, to be followed by a trip to Germany and France.

Lula and his leftist Workers Party (PT) were decisive factors in the decision to hold the WSF in the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state in its first three annual gatherings. The PT has governed Porto Alegre for the last 14 years. (END/2003)