Of the 60,000 participants at this year's WSF, 20,000 came from Tunisia. Credit: Monika Prokopczuk/IPS

When participants at the 2011 World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal, received word that former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had stepped down, swept away by a wave of popular resistance that brought millions of Egyptians into the streets, few could contain their joy.

But euphoria was quickly replaced by doubts: what is the purpose of the World Social Forum (WSF)? Is it even relevant anymore? How does it connect with people struggling to survive, and facing the guns on the ground?

“Yet here we are two years later,” said renowned commentator and social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein at the 2013 edition of the WSF in Tunis, “invited by the very people who made this revolution, who want us here, who want us to help strengthen their internal struggle in Tunisia. Is that irrelevant?”

His question points to the need, expressed by scores of participants who gathered here from Mar. 26-30, for serious reflection on the success and direction of the WSF, which has just completed its 13^th year.

Although the event was held in Tunis to honour the revolutionaries who toppled Tunisia’s former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali — and set in motion a chain of similar uprisings that came to be dubbed the Arab Spring — participants continue to wonder where the Forum will go, and what it is capable of achieving.

The workshop series “Decolonising the Forum” brought into focus the discrepancies of representation and accessibility.

This year drew a clear majority of non-Westerners: of the roughly 60,000 visitors, only 8,000 came from Europe, while up to 20,000 were from Tunisia alone. Yet, traditionally, large organisations such as the anti-globalisation Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions and Aid to Citizens (ATTAC), along with Europe and North America-based NGOs, have been better able than organisations in the South to send major delegations.

Speaking on behalf of the Indian National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers, Roma Malik recalled that the WSF started as a process to counter the negative consequences of globalisation and neoliberalism, which critics claim have created massive inequalities in the global distribution of income: just a glance at the Gini Index, which measures income inequality on a scale of 0 to 1, shows Namibia at 0.74, dangerously close to the point of “absolute inequality”, while industrialised countries like the Czech Republic, Norway and Japan hover around the 0.25 mark on the scale.

Thus, “The WSF should become less dominated by the big NGOs and efforts need to be made to bring more people to the gatherings who have less funding,” Roma told IPS.

This includes the kind of people that Roma works with, such as forest dwellers in India who are subject to land-grabbing and displacement, as multi-national corporations target these mineral-rich regions and replace natural forests with cash-crops and monocultures.

Over 1.1 million hectares of forest are under threat in the central Indian region, according to a recent report by Greenpeace entitled “Countering Coal”. Development of the Mahan coal block, located in the Singrauli district of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, could alone displace 14,000 tribal people.

This comes at a time when rural dwellers in India are having to fight for their right to prevent large-scale investments from disrupting their way of life, as the Indian government recently forced a watering down of protective legislation in the so-called Forest Rights Act, once heralded as a victorious achievement for forest dwellers.

Steven Faulkner, international officer of the South African Municipal Workers Union, put the burden of addressing the challenge of representation squarely on the shoulders of the Forum’s leadership, which traditionally takes the form of the International Council (IC), a representative body of roughly 140 members.

“We need a bold leadership, which considers itself accountable to the poor and the marginalised,” he said.

Having spent several decades working on labour issues throughout Africa, Faulkner stressed the fact that the world’s poor are not passive recipients of aid but are rather active survivors of a highly unequal economic, social and political world system.

This very act of survival is a creative process that “we should be looking at more carefully”, continued Faulkner, bringing in those directly affected to share their strategies.

“If we can free ourselves from the boundaries imposed by colonialism, and become genuinely free in the manner that Nelson Mandela talked about, then we can realise one thing: Africa has enormous potential.” Tapping into this potential involves “retention of humanity” by installing political, economic and environmental relationships based on mutuality instead of competition.

Other voices at the WSF pointed to the Forum’s great unifying and renewing effect. Hassen Ltaief, an activist during the Tunisian revolution, drew huge applause from the audience when he said: “We here are not the same anymore as we were before the WSF. We came to bring a new spirit to the Forum and as I can see in the eyes of the older activists, it appears this was a true success.”

What made the forum significant, Ltaief informed IPS, was that it opened the space for the development of a collective conscience, and highlighted the importance of collaborative organising, two critical lessons for Tunisia, which is experiencing the growing pains of a new democracy and is under enormous pressure to safeguard the hard-won gains of the revolutionary period.

Now, organisers are beginning to lay the groundwork for future meetings. The IC’s plans to hold its next planning meeting in the Maghreb region has given a boost to the Maghreb Social Forum, while a decision regarding an upcoming Maghreb/Mashreq Social Forum is expected in May.

The Maghreb Social Forum has been in existence since 2005, when it was called to life in Porto Alegre by Moroccans and Tunisians. It has since developed along the lines of a regional social forum, and has made special efforts to address issues pertaining to women, youth and broadening the civil society sector in Northern Africa.

Formal proposals for the next World Social Forum are also anticipated in the near future, while currently the ideas floating around range from India to Mexico, Canada, Brazil, or even Tunisia.

“The WSF has traditionally been a nomadic experience,” said Nicolas Haeringer, a long-time participant and observer of the International Council. “It needs to grow roots, more than previously, and as Tunis provided one of the most inspiring gatherings I’ve attended, it would not be so far-fetched of an idea to hold it here again.”

The Palestinian struggle took centre stage at the 2013 World Social Forum. Credit: Monika Prokopczuk/IPS

The conference drew both supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; conflicting opinions about the Polisario Front and the politics of Western Sahara; Palestinian activists and the Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. In short, the 13^th edition of the World Social Forum, held in Tunis on Mar. 26-30, was a melting pot of struggles and a search for common ground.

To the thousands of participants gathered in Tunis – where determined public protests toppled former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 – it was clear that a key function of the annual meeting is to build solidarity across movements for peace, justice and freedom.

Widely recognised as the cradle of the Arab Spring, Tunis was selected as the site for this year’s WSF in part to pay homage to the deceased fruit vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation sparked the Tunisian revolt and the ongoing Arab Spring.

Together in what is now an iconic city, over two years after the Tunisian revolution, activists reaffirmed their commitment to international unity.

“Our mission is to create a new form of solidarity, which is opposite to competition and exists to engender equities,” Mamdouh Habashi, member of the Egyptian Socialist Party and the South-South People’s Solidarity Network, told IPS, calling this “the spirit” of South-South cooperation.

The network comprises numerous grassroots movements throughout the world, and sees itself as a champion of democracy, equated here with people’s power and social progress.

For Rita Silva from the No-Vox Network, founded during the first European Social Forum in 2002, international solidarity could be the make or break factor in a successful movement. When the No-Vox Network addresses formidable tasks such as preventing evictions or demolitions in developing countries, she said, international support is key.

Those struggling in countries like Angola or Zimbabwe, for example, are largely cut off from the rest of the world. “They can easily be killed and no one says anything – but if they are connected (to international networks), they have protection,” she said.

Representing the International Alliance of Inhabitants, Mike Davies stressed the need to have a functioning platform from which local communities can speak to the world. Problems often arise, he said, when northern NGOs mediate the voices of their constituencies, who are either forced to learn the jargon of the NGO world or get lost in the process.

“Our sole focus is to strengthen communities to (enable) them to help themselves, and not continue to be victims of charity,” Davies said.

Although the Arab Spring has inspired protest movements for democratic change around the world, not all of its outcomes are cause for celebration. The Syrian civil war, which has so far claimed over 60,000 casualties according to conservative estimates, served as a grim reminder to the WSF participants that the consequences for failing to find common ground can be catastrophic.

Sara Ajlyakin, an activist in the Syrian uprising, stressed that while the outcome of the conflict is not yet clear, it has opened up vital spaces for organising and building unity.

“It is a historical advance that can not be reversed,” Ajlyakin told IPS. “We felt the power of the streets, the collective, and no one can take that away.”

Until the Arab Spring, she said, the population of Syria had no outlet for its frustrations and grievances. “But that is gone now – if you are a woman, a worker, a student, a member of the LGBT community, whichever walk of life you come from, you can now collectively express your opinion.”

Acknowledging that conflicting visions and ideologies impact the nature of a movement of conflict, Ajlyakin dismissed the notion of “Islamists versus secularists” as a false binary.

The only binary she recognises is between “revolutionary and anti-revolutionary” activity. “The Islamists are not the devil,” she said. “By isolating them you encourage the historical mistake of the Arab Left, which equates secularism with atheism.”

“It is my job to communicate a message to political Islamists: ‘I’m not planning to eliminate you, I’m a part of you, you’re a part of me, but you also can’t isolate me’,” she said, echoing the conference’s theme of sowing unity, rather than division.

In the true spirit of international solidarity, the Palestinian cause took centre stage at the Forum, with the concluding event consisting of a march through Tunis that ended at the Palestinian embassy to commemorate Palestinian Land Day.

According to Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organisations Network, it was “fully apparent” that the Palestinians were in the minds and hearts of the participants here.

“Solidarity comes from all sides,”  Shawa told IPS, naming the presence of such organisations as the Jewish Anti-Zionist Network who came to the Forum and demonstrated alongside the large Palestinian delegation.

(END)

Refugees from the Choucha camp in Tunisia are demanding recognition of their legal status. Credit: Alberto Pradilla/IPS

“We need a solution. The U.N. has created the problem, and they should do their work and fix it,” says Bright, a young Nigerian stuck in the Choucha refugee camp in Tunisia, a few kilometres from the Libyan border.

Bright and hundreds of other refugees have spent the last two years in a camp that has turned into a no man’s land. They are mainly immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa who were living in Libya but fled the country at the start of the armed clashes that led to the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi (1969-2011).

Of the thousands who originally crossed the border, 250 are left, from different countries. Their refugee status is not recognised, and officially they don’t exist. The United Nations rejected their applications for asylum, and they can’t return to their countries of origin or Libya, where blacks are suspected of being loyalists or mercenaries and face repression.

They are living in extreme conditions, and their plight is ignored by international institutions and the Tunisian government.

During this week’s World Social Forum, held in Tunis, a group of 50 refugees made it to the capital to demand a solution. Thirty-seven of them declared a hunger strike on Friday Mar. 29 outside the office of the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR).

The hunger strikers pledged to continue their fast until a solution was found. The situation of the refugees will become even more complex if the camp is closed in June, as the UNHCR has announced.

“In my country I was active in political issues, so I was persecuted. That’s why I went to Libya,” Mousa Ibrahim, from Chad, tells IPS. People from Chad are the largest group in Choucha, numbering around 80.

“I registered in the camp because they promised that they would recognise us as refugees,” he complains. But more than 48 months have gone by; his daughter Jalida was born in Choucha, and his situation has merely gotten worse and worse.

“The Tunisian refugee commission has rejected me. They say I have two options: to go back to my country or return to Libya. In Chad I would be thrown into prison or killed. And in Libya, black people are persecuted. I just want to be recognised as a refugee and allowed to go to a country where I can live in safety,” he says.

Two years ago, the Libyan conflict triggered an exodus that overwhelmed Ras Jdir, the main border crossing into Tunisia from Libya, and led to its temporary closure.

The UNCHR gradually transferred most of the refugees from the Choucha camp. The remaining families, from Chad, Nigeria, the Western Sahara, the Darfur region in Sudan, or Palestine, complain that they were left out of the transfer, for one reason or another.
At first, dozens of organisations were working to address the humanitarian crisis in the camp. But now, hardly any aid is arriving. The refugees continue to sleep in the tents in the camp, but the assistance is drying up.

Food stopped arriving five months ago, and they do what they can to find food. And since their applications for refugee status have been rejected, they don’t have the right to be relocated to another country. In practice, it is as if they didn’t exist.

“We aren’t immigrants and we aren’t trying to go to another country because we’re looking for work. The problem is political: we are refugees,” Bright tells IPS during a sit-in outside of the European Union office in Tunisia on Wednesday Mar. 27.

Frightened by the prospect of the closure of the camp in June, the refugees have begun to mobilise.

But survival itself is difficult, let alone carrying out a campaign to raise awareness of their plight and demand solutions.

On one hand are the economic problems. They hardly scrape by, and need the help of Tunisian and foreign activists who collect funds to pay for their trips. Then there are the obstacles put in place by the Tunisian government, which has sent in police to keep the refugees from moving about.

That happened in January, when around 100 of them managed to reach the capital, where they spent five days informing people about their situation. And it happened again before the World Social Forum. When they were heading out of the camp, the police stopped their buses at Ben Gardane, 443 km south of Tunis.

But half of the refugees who had set out, including Ibrahim and Bright, made it.

Their signs were visible at the entrance to the World Social Forum, held Mar. 26-30 on the El Manar university campus. The placards were also seen outside official buildings like the U.S. and British embassies.

Their demand is clear: a solution to leave behind the limbo in which they are living.

But although the question of the refugees came up in several workshops this week at the WSF – the largest global gathering of organised civil society opposed to the direction globalisation is taking – and many activists expressed solidarity with their cause, no clear statement was issued urging the U.N. to reconsider their status.

“This is a real case, not theory,” Bright complains. His tired eyes show how fed up he is with all the doors being slammed in his face, and reflect his lack of confidence in institutions that have failed to help him and his fellow refugees.

The refugees say official representatives have tried to negotiate in parallel with the different national communities in the camp, while the deadline of closure looms.

The WSF ended Saturday in Tunis with a closing act and a demonstration for the Palestinians’ Land Day. Meanwhile, the unrecognised refugees will stay here, waiting for a solution.

Booths and stands at the World Social Forum on the El Manar campus in Tunis. Credit: Alberto Pradilla/IPS

The World Social Forum’s traditional focus on economic, political and social injustice caused by globalisation shifted towards the revolts and unrest of the Arab Spring, in the current edition of the global gathering in Tunisia.

The WSF “contributed in Latin America to the construction of governments that are with the popular classes. We hope that will also happen in the Arab world,” said Tarek Ben Hiba, a human rights activist in Tunisia and France.

He was referring to the Tunisian left’s expectations with respect to the 12th annual WSF taking place Mar. 26-30 in the capital, Tunis, where demonstrations forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power in January 2011.

The WSF got its start in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001, drawing together hundreds of NGOs and movements critical of the direction taken by the globalisation process.

The 2013 WSF was organised in Tunisia, the cradle of the Arab revolts, to express support for the processes of change triggered by the December 2010 self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, an impoverished fruit vendor whose desperate last act sparked the Tunisian revolution and, ultimately, the ongoing Arab Spring.

The first WSF edition hosted by an Arab country has become a reflection of the achievements and pending challenges in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, and of the contradictions and unresolved clashing visions.

On one hand is the broad conflict between secularists and Islamists, especially in Tunisia and Egypt. And on the other is the war raging in Syria and the uncertainty and instability in Libya.

The conflict in Syria has been one of the main sources of tension in the WSF workshops and panels held this week across the Tunis El Manar University campus.

Supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been sharing space on a campus that has been turned into an encampment of heterogeneous global struggles.

On Thursday, for example, while four Syrian communist and two Kurd organisations discussed future action against the regime, supporters of al-Assad held a rally in the central square. The two groups did not cross paths, so no confrontation took place, but the tension was palpable.

Participants in the debate held by the Syrian communists and Kurds told IPS that they had agreed on a document recognising the importance of the individual and collective rights of all ethnic groups in Syria, which is especially significant for the Kurds, the largest minority.

They also agreed to hold a day of solidarity with the Syrian uprising, in the first week of May.

The sources said a congress was being planned for June, to bring together “the Syrian, European and Latin American internationalist left” to coordinate support for the revolt.

The situation in Libya has been another source of tension. On Wednesday, two groups clashed when one of them tried to hold up a sign in support of Muammar Gaddafi (who governed the country from 1969 to October 2011, when he was captured and killed by rebel forces).

That provoked a reaction by supporters of the uprising, who have several stands at the WSF, where the revolution’s tricolour flag and the flag of the nomadic Berber or Amazigh people can be seen.

“We are better off than they are saying,” Fatma, a woman from Tripoli who belongs to an organisation fighting for women’s participation in political life, told IPS. “There are problems, but we are learning from scratch, because there was no civil society before.”

The disputes between Islamists and secularists that are heating up the political processes in Tunisia and Egypt have also been reflected at this week’s WSF.

One of the novel aspects with respect to previous WSF sessions is the presence of organisations with ties to mosques, in booths on campus as well as specific protests.

For example, for over a month, female university students have staged a sit-in on campus to protest university regulations that prohibit the niqab – the full Muslim veil that only shows the eyes. Muslim students argue that the ban violates their freedom of religion.

The protests are occurring in a climate of growing clashes since the assassination of leftist politician Shokri Belaid in February.

“The participants in the Forum are demanding freedom, which is why we’re asking for your support,” said Nabi Wahbi, one of the young demonstrators taking part in the pro-niqab protest.

The integration of these groups in an environment marked by the struggle for women’s rights is a challenge for these gatherings.

Progressive groups in Tunisia accuse Islamists of trying to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, and of undermining the rights of women.

But the Arab revolutionary processes are not the only challenge facing this week’s WSF. There are also deeply-rooted nationalist conflicts.

The central ones involve Palestine and the Western Sahara. But while Palestine is the main cause espoused by several delegations, the Sahrawis are facing off with the enormous delegation from Morocco, who tried to discredit the demands for independence of the inhabitants of the former Spanish colony.

“The Polisario Front is lying,” read a sign referring to the political movement leading the struggle for the independence of Western Sahara, proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in 1976 by the independence fighters.

Moroccan activist Benis Ghitah complained about the Sahrawi refugees, who have been living for decades in remote camps in southwest Algeria.

But the Sahrawis combat the campaign against them. “Morocco tries to confuse people,” Dih Naocha told IPS, who expressed fears because this was the first time representatives of the Sahrawi people had come to Tunisia to defend their rights.

The change of region by the WSF also involved a shift in focus. But it is also true that, as Ben Hiba indicated, the WSF sessions in the first decade of the 21st century served as support for emancipatory processes in Latin America – something that the revolutionary Arab forces hope to repeat with this week’s event.

Bloggers, human rights groups and activists of different stripes have had a chance to meet face to face. Time will reveal the results.

Old and grounded commuter trains belonging to National Railways of Zimbabwe in Harare lie in disuse. The country’s rail transport system is in crisis. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

Zimbabwe’s rail transport system may be nearing extinction if the government does not take drastic action to solve the series of operational challenges that have made commuter and goods train services rare here.

“The railway services are certainly in crisis because they have to keep paying about 7,000 people – most of whom have little chance of actually earning revenue for the system. The services are a drain on the economy,” John Robertson, a prominent economist from Robertson Economic Information Services in Harare, told IPS.

Independent economist Richard Laiton added that there is a possibility that it could mean the end of this southern African nation’s railway system. “It is unfortunate that the railroad transport system is turning idle and passive and may for the first time in history be phased out in Zimbabwe,” he told IPS.

According to statistics from the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ), just before 2012 there were 120,000 daily train commuters countrywide. It has since dropped by 20 percent, a figure that NRZ officials said continues to fall.

“We used to have regular local commuter trains, but now they are rarely available and (minibus taxi) operators are daily milking us of our hard-earned cash,” Dickson Chirambwi, a commuter from Harare’s Budiriro high-density suburb, told IPS.

The recent fuel hikes have done little to ease the situation. On Mar. 11, Finance Minister Tendai Biti announced a 20 and 25 percent increase in excise duties on diesel and petrol respectively as a way to raise money to pay for Zimbabwe’s elections later this year. Currently, a litre of fuel costs between 1.53 dollars for diesel and 1.59 dollars for petrol.

Locally, minibus taxis charge between 0.50 dollars per trip to and from town, fares which often double during peak hours as taxi operators take advantage of desperate commuters who have little or no alternative transport. It is steep compared to the 0.20 dollars that commuter trains charge per trip to and from town.

But these commuter train services are now rare. Speaking to IPS on condition of anonymity, top NRZ officials in Harare told IPS that the railway’s numerous locomotives, wagons and coaches were now out of order, resulting in the struggling company battling to keep most of its workers.

Disgruntled NRZ workers continually protest for increased wages and operations at the railway are often disrupted because of this. Recent protests over wages saw the NRZ cancelling its Bindura and Chinhoyi line.

Dabuka is a commuter train marshalling yard in Gweru, in central Zimbabwe, and is supposed to be the epicentre of the country’s rail network, connecting trains between Harare and Bulawayo and linking the country with Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. But it is now desolate owing to reduced train commuters and goods trains passing through the siding.

Robertson said that considerable funding was needed to restore the railway services.

“We also need to restore stability to many of the sections of railway after years of neglect and we have to virtually rebuild the electronic traffic control and signaling systems. Many of the more important technical skills have been lost over the years of decline, so these too must be replaced. It all adds up to a very large and very expensive challenge,” he said.

Zimbabwe is still recovering from an economic crisis. Between 2003 and 2009, the country had one of the worst rates of hyperinflation in the world and its year on year inflation was reported as 231 percent. Prices of goods doubled here everyday and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe was forced to issue a 100 trillion  Zimbabwean dollar note.

Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce economist Kipson Gundani told IPS that the state-owned NRZ should be allowed to operate on a commercial basis.

“The NRZ suffered because of a decade-long economic crisis and doesn’t have a profit-making intention, resulting in the pegging of fares that are not cost-driven,” said Gundani.

A development economist with the Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe, Prosper Chitambara, told IPS that the NRZ needed recapitalisation to save it, but the government said it did not have the funds.

The NRZ needs recapitalisation to the tune of between 300 and 400 million dollars for upgrading and rehabilitating infrastructure, but this year the government only allocated it 7.4 million dollars. Biti had said the NRZ infrastructure rehabilitation and maintenance surpassed the government’s budgetary capacity.

Businesspeople said they have also been affected by the dwindling rail transport services.

“Business used to be more viable for me during the days when I used to transport my tires for resell using goods trains from South Africa, but now I have to fork out more money hiring heavy trucks because goods trains are no longer reliable,” Brighton Mugadzi, a local businessman, told IPS.

Public relations manager for the NRZ, Fanuel Masikati, has been on record blaming the ailing company’s poor performance on the more than 90 Bulawayo firms that shut down last year.

But many are afraid that without trains, and with the increased transport costs, ordinary citizens and pensioners will be strained by consequent increases in prices of basic commodities.

Women vendors are among those hit by the reduced commuter rail services as they used to rely heavily on the trains to get to Mbare-Musika, an old, poor township in Harare, which has a major trading fruit and vegetable market.

“Commuter trains used to charge us 0.20 dollars per trip, but now we rarely see them operating,” 43-year-old Margret Chihwai, a vendor and single mother from Mufakose, a low income suburb in Harare, told IPS.

She said to get to the market now she has to use minibus taxis and fork out one dollar per trip during morning peak hours.

Many who once operated as vendors on commuter trains, like the blind 46-year-old Garikai Zinhu, have since plunged into suffering.

“I used to follow commuter trains on a daily basis, vending on the trains and that used to help me sustain my family. But now I’m without means to fend for my family,” Zinhu told IPS.

Meanwhile, industrialist Nickson Mhike told IPS that something needed to be done soon to avoid a crisis.

“Zimbabwe may face the subsequent disappearance of commuter and goods trains if urgent efforts are not made on time to solve the crisis at the NRZ inflicted by a decade-long economic meltdown,” he said.

A youth delegation from Tunis heads to the countryside to spread the word of the World Social Forum. Credit: Monika Prokopczuk/IPS

In the final countdown to this year’s World Social Forum (WSF), Tunisian civil society and the country’s capital, Tunis, prepares for an influx of over 50,000 visitors. With the dates of the forum set for Mar. 26-30, uncompleted tasks are being fast-tracked while the university campus that will host the forum is being given a security face-lift.

The biggest question on the minds of the organisers and their international guests is the security situation in the country. It was only last month, on Feb. 6, that popular left-wing politician Chokri Belaid was murdered near his home in Tunis. His death led to political uncertainty and eventually the resignation of Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, as well as protests on the street.

Legitimate concerns that the country might slip into turmoil and instability have spread fast and are keeping visitors at bay.

“We get many emails every day from people who are worried about this,” said Haifa Nakib, who is in charge of logistics and administration of the WSF. “I tell them: ‘Don’t believe all the hype on TV! Tunisia is not at war and the situation here is peaceful. There is no terrorism here, in fact the government is even going to secure the location’.”

The government is indeed cooperating fully with the organisers of the massive gathering, and has even deployed a security team to locations surrounding the campus, which organisers hope will be “discreet”.

Cheima Ben Hamida, a volunteer coordinator, informed IPS that security would also be provided to organisers inside the campus. She is further comforted by the fact that the government “has instructed all its ministries to aid the WSF to the fullest extent possible”.

Meanwhile, enthusiasm over the event is at full throttle. Over 4,500 organisations from over 85 countries have registered. France and Tunisia top the list of participants: each plans to have representatives from over 300 groups present. Brazil, Belgium, Italy and Morocco are also high up, with each represented by at least 50 organisations.

The U.S. is also sending its largest WSF delegation to date. With 66 groups currently registered, this marks the highest level of participation from the North American country. Canada is likewise dispatching a large contingent.

Among the many topics to be addressed and debated are women’s rights, youth and culture. Though the main theme of the Forum is the Arab Spring, other issues — from the global economic crisis to the global ecological crisis — will be given due importance.

Demonstrating their commitment to the success of the event, the Tunisian immigration authorities have made participation accessible to visitors from countries without diplomatic accords or the presence of embassies. Fresh arrivals who produce a letter of invitation will be granted an entry visa. Thus, citizens of countries like Peru or Israel will have no problem attending the meet.

The third edition of the World Free Media Forum (WFMF) will be held simultaneously, starting on Mar. 24 and carrying on throughout the entire duration of the WSF.

Several hundred media representatives are expected to participate in workshops, discussions and media coverage of the forum. A free media village has been set up for this purpose, while non-profit community radio has been targeted as a preferred media format.

Another “forum within the forum” will be an international youth camp, which will bring together young people aged 18 to 30 and provide a space to organise sports, dances, cooking competitions and debates.

Khalil Teber, a member of the youth commission and co-organiser of the youth forum, shared his excitement with IPS: “We are providing the youth with a space of their own. Activities have been planned for day and night – it will be like four days without sleep.”

“Our vision,” added Teber, “is to present Tunisian youth to the world, including the version of the Tunisian revolution as the youth see it. And we want all Tunisian youth there, regardless of their political stripes.”

Besides being a celebration of the birthplace of the Arab Spring, this year’s convergence is significant for another reason: participants plans to discuss, in detail, the future of the World Social Forum.

It is clear to all those attending and organising the event that numerous other social and grassroots mobilisations – such as the Occupy movement – continue to play a major role. While not able to replace this forum, they do point to the need for the WSF to reflect and then evolve. This entails the integration of sundry movements and initiatives into the evolutionary process of the WSF.

“If the content is effective and the social forum becomes refreshed with this edition, then it will move forward,” according to Ben Hamida.

Romdhane Ben Amor, the man in charge of communication at WSF, stressed: “What is really important is what comes after the forum. A new way of thinking needs to emerge, a new vision of the world. If the forum can help both Tunisian and worldwide social movements to build on their strengths and find new ways of cooperation, then it will have been a success.”

Participants at a debate during the Thematic Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January. Credit: Clarinha Glock/IPS

The tragedy at the Kiss nightclub cast a dark shadow on proceedings at the Thematic Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, the southern Brazilian city renowned for hosting the first World Social Forum in 2001.

People around the world were deeply shaken by the deaths of hundreds of young people who perished in a fire at the Kiss nightclub, located in the university city of Santa Maria, 292 kilometres from Porto Alegre, early on Jan. 27.

By Friday Feb. 1, 236 fatalities had been confirmed, while dozens of young people remained in critical condition. The fire was apparently caused by negligence and a series of errors on the part of the club’s management and the band.

The organising committeee of the Thematic Social Forum (TSF), held Jan. 26-31, immediately cancelled the cultural events that had been planned, but decided to go ahead with the debates on this year’s overall themes: democracy, cities, sustainable development and decent work.

The World Social Forum (WSF) is the largest global meeting for open debate for thousands of civil society groups and organisations, whose common denominator is criticism of the ethos and effects of capitalist globalisation.

A few days before the TSF, Brazil’s foremost trade union confederation, the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), and the World March of Women announced they would not be participating in the debates, in protest of what they called the “institutionalisation” of the forum by the Porto Alegre local government, which passed a law providing for the WSF to be held annually.

Another criticism was aimed at the participation of “right-wing” organisations, such as representatives of the business community and religious groups.

Perhaps because of the criticisms, the cancellation of the entertainment or the sobering effects of the tragedy in Santa Maria, expectations that 40,000 people would come to Porto Alegre were not fulfilled.

According to Cícero Pereira da Silva, a delegate from the União Geral de Trabalhadores (UGT) and one of the coordinators of the group debating the world of work, 15,000 people registered as participants, including visitors from Latin American countries, Europe and the United States.

The “Carta de Porto Alegre“, which documents the conclusions and proposals of the TSF, will be presented in March to the International Council of the WSF, which will be held in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia.

With regards to the world of work, “We decided on uncompromising struggle for human rights and quality of life in big cities,” Pereira da Silva told IPS. “We had a major debate on decent work, which was always one of the overarching issues at the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and we focused a great deal on the tragedy in Santa Maria. We blame the authorities for lack of regulation and oversight,” he said.

Regarding health issues, the Movimento Saúde +10 — a movement of professional medical organisations, university bodies, trade unions and religious groups — proposed collecting 1.5 million signatures in support of a bill that would allocate 10 percent of the federal budget for healthcare.

The Carta de Porto Alegre also emphasises the need for a new ethic, for education and for preservation of traditional farming techniques.

The group that participated in discussions about racial equality condemned religious intolerance, violence against women and the absence of local government plans to increase participation by the Afro-descendant population.

José Antônio dos Santos da Silva, coordinator of the Fórum Permanente de Educação e Diversidade Etnicorracial (Permanent Forum on Ethno-Racial Education and Diversity) for the state of Rio Grande do Sul, mourned the nightclub deaths and, simultaneously, recalled that many young black people are murdered every day in this country of nearly 200 million people. However, the press does not publicise these facts, he said.

“The lack of employment opportunities for young black people and their co-option into drug trafficking (schemes) are alarming,” Silva told IPS. “This strengthens our demand for a quota policy in public education. Violence indices show that seven out of 10 young people who are killed are black, and 90 percent of them live in the shanty towns” surrounding cities.

At the same time as the TSF was being held, social activists were meeting in the southern city of São Paulo for the “Dialogue toward the World Social Forum” organised by the Group of Reflection and Support for the WSF Process.

Messaoud Romdhani, one of the organisers of the Tunis WSF, was optimistic about the gathering — in spite of the uncertainties and tensions currently plaguing his country, the cradle of the popular movements that shook the Middle East and North Africa two years ago, which the press dubbed the “Arab Spring”.

Romdhani, a 56-year-old English teacher and human rights activist, hopes the WSF will boost positive exchanges between the Tunisian population and representatives of international civil society organisations.

“We want them to see the situation in Tunisia and we hope they can help us get over the transition that has been very difficult, because the government has so far not shown any interest in (fostering) democracy and guaranteeing human rights,” Romdhani told IPS.

After the uprising that overthrew dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, there was a series of reforms in Tunisia including the election of a constituent assembly to write the constitution, and the formation of a provisional government, in which the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party holds a majority.

But Romdhani maintained that “the practices of the old regime persist, and there are threats from the religious party that dominates the government.”

The activist fears a lurch towards Islamist extremism, hence the importance of maintaining the struggles for gender equality and freedom of expression. “The WSF will help us to attract attention towards Tunisia and it will supply fuel and solidarity for these struggles,” he said.

According to Romdhani, the Tunisian authorities have not put any restrictions in the way of the WSF, “perhaps because they want to show the international media that the government is behaving properly.”

The Arab Spring — mass protests in which people demonstrated for freedom, dignity and equality — sparked a dream, he said. “We who had fought for all this for such a long time became aware that overthrowing a dictator is much easier than (instituting) a democracy.

“Democracy takes time to overcome years of oppression, vested oil interests and intolerance,” he concluded.

Traditional social movements of homeless and landless people have for years been organising occupations as a pressure tactic. Now “occupying” is a key element for fighting the capitalist system in its hour of crisis, and also in the realm of virtual reality.

Global Connections meeting, part of the Thematic Social Forum. Credit: Clarinha Glock/IPS

With a shout of “Let’s occupy Flamengo Park!” in Rio de Janeiro, representatives of trade unions, landless rural workers, women, indigenous people, Afro-Brazilians and “quiombolas” (descendants of former slaves) wound up the Thematic Social Forum (FST) last weekend in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.

The FST was held Jan. 24-29 as a preparatory meeting for the June People’s Summit that will take place in Rio in June, in parallel with the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).

Meanwhile, at the Global Connections meeting in Porto Alegre, held within the framework of the FST, internet activists called for a campaign to block corporate web sites, as a form of virtual occupation.

The FST, an outgrowth of the World Social Forum, prompted discussion of modern forms of protest. Representatives of popular movements like the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and the “Indignados” (Indignant) from Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom took part in the debate, in person or via the internet.

Two issues captured the most attention: What to do after the occupations? And how to get the new information technology tools into the hands of traditional social movements that do not yet have access to them?

In a video conference from the U.K., communicator and researcher Matheus Lock would not hazard a prediction on the future of the occupations. “At Occupy London, people were waiting around for political directions over Twitter,” he said.

“There is no leadership. There are discussion groups, and some real representatives. Even homeless people participate,” he added.

In the same discussion panel, Wilhelmina Trout of the World March of Women spoke of the difficulties of making the world aware of what goes on in sub-Saharan Africa, where most people do not have electricity, let alone access to internet.

Journalist Emiliano Bos, who has covered several conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East, recalled how one million people fled Libya last year and entered bordering countries like Egypt and Tunisia.

“We could follow the movement in city squares in Egypt, but we could not see the millions of people who were mobilising, off the radar of the news broadcasts, in refugee camps,” he said.

“These people are not represented, they do not protest, they do not occupy. The only means of expression they have is flight. All they hope for is a piece of paper that will let them out of there,” he said.

For his part, Moroccan national Hamouda Soubhi of the Maghreb Social Forum said, “Our struggles are the same, although we speak different languages.

“When the media announced that a revolution was happening in the Arab world, we were taken by surprise, because for many years we have been denouncing human rights violations and going to prison for it, but the West wanted to preserve the regime, for the sake of oil exports and exploiting raw materials,” he said.

“As far as we were concerned, this was not a revolution. It was only the right to have democracy, justice and freedom. We are at a historic crossroads with a great number of opportunities: Rio+20, the Maghreb Social Forum, The World Social Forum Free Palestine and young people’s movements in Europe and different parts of the world which are making change possible, not tomorrow, but today,” he added.

In the view of sociologist Sérgio Amadeu da Silveira, a professor at the Federal University of ABC in São Paulo who took part in the Global Connections discussions, change requires the construction of “interactive democracy”, not only participative democracy.

“Traditional social movements need to unite more closely with activists in the hacker culture and online,” he told IPS.

“That way it would be possible to construct a new public sphere that is interactive and interconnected and would act as another platform for formulating policy,” he added.

According to Silveira, “it is necessary to open up the ‘source code’ of power,” alluding to the lines of text instructing a computer to execute a given programme – access and understanding of which is synonymous with control.

Civil society has the capacity to force powerful corporations whose decisions can cause environmental, social and economic devastation to face up to their social responsibility, he said.

For instance, “Occupy Wall Street can make these large corporations pay the cost of the crisis. Political parties in general cannot do this, because they are financed by the very same companies,” said Silveira.

Meanwhile, French economist Gustave Massiah, speaking in the great hall of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, said the crisis is social, geopolitical, ideological and ecological, and the challenge is to connect the new popular movements with the groups that are already fighting for global justice.

Occupy London activist Sam Halvorsen concurred, recognising that environmental issues had not so far been a central concern. “We’re thinking about how to link the problems arising from the crisis with climate change. It’s time we thought about forging those links.”

The more than 30 local and international organisations working at the FST meeting to formulate demands to be presented to the People’s Summit have already used the internet to disseminate their manifesto, although they know that more effort is needed in order to make a real difference.

The People’s Summit activities will start Jun. 5, World Environment Day, followed by workshops on “struggles, denunciations and connections” until Jun. 10; Jun. 15-16 are days reserved for discussion; then on Jun. 17 there will be a march to mark the opening of the Permanent People’s Assembly, which will be in session until Jun. 21.

A big march is being planned in Rio de Janeiro for Jun. 20, which the organisers hope will be replicated all over the country and in several world cities, in order to visibly occupy the streets.

Critical voices raised against what was dubbed “the gospel of green capitalism” resonated in every discussion and street march held during the Thematic Social Forum, which brought thousands of activists to the capital city of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in southern Brazil.

Labour and other activists flood the streets of Porto Alegre in environmental protest. Credit: Clarinha Glock/IPS

Spurred by the global economic and financial crisis, participants at this year’s thematic edition of the World Social Forum, which ran from Jan. 24th through the 29th, called on governments to implement changes in production and consumption, even as they were sceptical that a commitment along those lines could be secured at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), scheduled for June in Rio de Janeiro.

Professor Edgardo Lander, of the Central University of Venezuela and a member of that country’s Social Forum, said there was “an attempt to rebuild capitalism with a new, green face.”

“Rio+20 comes at a time when capitalism faces a profound crisis and when the severe problems arising from the limitations of growth and the destruction of the conditions that make life on the planet possible are more evident,” he told Tierramérica.

In this context, “green capitalism” offers a solution to the severe crisis, primarily of the financial sector, through the increasing commodification of everything from education and healthcare to the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples, he said.

Lander appealed to participants to act to shatter this model.

A roundtable in the auditorium of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul brought together a representative of the Occupy London movement, a member of the Social Forum of Northern Africa, a rural leader of La Vía Campesina, and Brazilian, French, Thai, and Venezuelan activists, symbolising this new period in history that is marked by popular uprisings, like the Arab Spring, and by one of the most acute crisis of the capitalist system ever.

According to João Pedro Stédile, one of the founders of Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) and a member of the social organisation Vía Campesina, the situation faced by the industrialised world today is similar to the 1929 crash.

“But the difference is that for the first time the crisis touches every country,” he said.

For Stédile, global capital no longer heeds the decisions of national governments. “The U.N.’s (United Nations) resolutions are not taken seriously, which is why Rio+20 is going to be a cruel joke,” he said.

Part of the problem lies in “the eagerness of big global capital to protect itself until the next period of accumulation,” Stédile added. There is a huge offensive by capital to snatch up raw materials, lands, water, oil and other resources, he said.

“They know that resources have an extraordinary potential for profit,” he continued.

For his part, economist Marcos Arruda understands that short, medium and long-term solutions need to be devised. In this sense he hopes to expand networks such as Brazil’s solidarity economy network, which currently involves 24,000 ventures and at least 1.5 million people, according to an initial assessment.

“Solidarity economy brings about change here and now, in the lives of families and communities, and also at the government level, creating new legislation that facilitates and promotes cooperatives and associations”, Arruda told Tierramérica.

“The right to property is derived from work, not from capital,” said Arruda, who coordinates the Institute of Alternative Policies for the Southern Cone, is a member of the Brazilian Civil Society Facilitating Committee for Rio+20 and one of the founders of the Solidarity Social-Economy Global Network.

But this expert fears that great environmental disasters are advancing at a faster rate than the population’s organizational capacity. His experience tells him that the necessary changes will not come from governments at Rio+20.

“Our impression is that they (the governments) are coming to this meeting once again without any political will to commit to carbon emission, greenhouse gas, and deforestation targets, as these would entail undertaking the obligation to achieve concrete results,” he said.

Arruda used data from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to show how, in general, global capitalism tends to concentrate wealth.

He illustrated this with an example from Rio 1992 (the Earth Summit held in that city in 1992), where global wealth distribution was depicted as a “champagne coupe,” with the broad, shallow bowl representing the richest 20 percent of the world’s population who have 82.7 percent of the world’s income, and the long thin stem representing the poorest 20 percent who receive only 1.4 percent.

Twenty years of neoliberalism have increased the share of the wealthiest 20 percent to 91.5 percent of the world’s income. Meanwhile, the share of the poorest 20 percent plunged down to 0.07 percent of all income, he said.

The concentration of more and more wealth in the hands of an increasingly smaller minority is one of two major consequences of globalised capitalism. The second is the relentless destruction of the environment to achieve infinite economic growth, acting as if nature and land were also infinite and that all the resources they offer can be exploited, Arruda said.

“That is where a solidarity economy comes in and says ‘No! We can’t allow that! It’s suicidal. We need to curb growth, plan according to our needs, and create decent living conditions and guarantee happiness for all, taking into account future generations and the importance of continuing to act according to our needs,” he concluded.

*The writer is an IPS correspondent. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

That is the assessment made by Portuguese sociologist Boaventura Sousa Santos who spoke to an audience of 300 at the Thematic Social Forum (TSF), which is being held from Jan. 24 to 29 in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre and surrounding municipalities.

The TSF is an offshoot of the World Social Forum that originated in this same city in 2001.

This year’s edition of the TSF focuses on “Capitalist Crises, Environmental and Social Justice” and has drawn some 10,000 participants.

The thematic meeting also promotes a future of widespread radical democracy, social relations based on the respect for human rights, and an end to international power structures that divide the world into a “centre” and a “periphery”.

In June, another Brazilian city, Rio de Janeiro, will host the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20, which is why the environmental crisis is also a key issue of discussion in Porto Alegre. Sousa Santos said he disagreed with the traditional approach to this issue.

“The first problem I have with this is the disagreement over the nature of the crisis. Seeing it simply as a matter of climate change is a highly reductionist approach. It’s an economic and financial crisis, an energy crisis, a crisis of the environment and of civilisation,” he said.

With this the sociologist arrived at the central point of his analysis: “As (Karl) Marx put it, the micro-irrationalities of capitalism lead to a macro-irrationality of life.”

In the 50-minute address he delivered on Wednesday, this professor of Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal) and the University of Wisconsin- Madison (United States) identified the threats through which this capitalist macro-irrationality is expressed. Four such threats are connected directly with the crisis of democracy.

These include an increasingly disorganised state, with traditionally public services replaced by widespread credit for the masses, which resulted in the current financial crisis; and the dissolution of democracy, as capitalism no longer needs it and promotes instead solutions like the current technocratic “democratorships” of Italy and Greece.

Another threat is the criminalisation of dissent, which is seen in South America in processes such as the forceful displacement of poor populations (Brazil) or in indigenous resistance movements (Chile).

And lastly, the prejudices inherited from colonialism: “Contrary to what could be expected, racism is on the rise again and gaining increasing strength. Moreover, there is no indication that sexism has become a thing of the past or that there is respect for sexual diversity. These expressions are vestiges of past colonial domination, which have resurfaced as prejudices.”

The expert identifies democratising, decolonising and decommodifying as the new challenges that the movements participating in the World Social Forum must take on in this new phase.

“Democratising demands radicalism,” he said. And he went to define “socialism as synonymous with a never-ending democracy that governs every space. Not just institutions, but also the workplace, the home, and the bedroom. Parties must understand that they don’t hold the monopoly of political representation. And neither do movements.”

“We are moving towards an era of presence, collective presence in the streets, occupying spaces that capital claims for itself, spaces not necessarily connected to an established movement,” he said.

“Cities play a major role in the task of decommodifying life. We need to move dimensions such as culture, urban mobility, experiences and sociability outside the sphere of the market. The results would be immediate,” he said.

“For example, culture, which is being trivialised, re-emerges immediately as a space of resistance as soon as it is treated as a right and as a product of human inspiration,” he added.

With respect to decolonisation, Sousa Santos had some criticism for the government, despite his support for Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and the governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Tarso Genro.

“Brazil has created so many positive models and it cannot be on side of neoliberalism or pat itself on the back for the ‘new’ Forestry Code or for simplifying environmental licensing processes to accelerate certain large infrastructure works,” he said.

Near the end, the sociologist confessed he was “a tragic optimist. I believe we can change the world, but I know that change requires enormous efforts, mobilisations and even pain.”

He also made some predictions for the near future. “This decade is going to demand more enlightened and creative leaders, and more combative social movements. The battle against social fascism is waged within institutions, but also on the streets through the defence of a never-ending democracy.”