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WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Multifaceted Meet Is at a Crossroads

Mario Osava

MUMBAI, India, Jan 21 2004 (IPS) - "The World Social Forum mobilises too much energy to be limited to mere exchange of ideas and reflection," says one of the event’s organisers, summarising the concern that marked the end of the fourth edition of this annual civil society meet here Wednesday.

The comment comes from Jorge Saavedra Durao, member of the committee in charge of the next WSF, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, as president of the Brazilian Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (ABONG). He says decision-making mechanisms are needed in the Forum that do not violate its principle of maintaining unity in diversity.

We could begin with issues that already have consensus, such as the fight against militarism, which demands "going out to the streets" to keep the campaign active, Saavedra Durao told IPS.

With different focuses and proposals, organisers as well as participants expressed concern about the path the WSF will take after the "explosion of the popular masses" in Mumbai, as it was described by Brazilian Catholic bishop Tomás Balduino, who at 81 participated in the Forum, representing the Pastoral Land Commission.

The images of the extreme poverty in Mumbai’s outskirts melded with the never-ending marches staged around the WSF venue by groups from India, with their many colours and demands for social change.

The magnitude of India’s social problems, reflected in the immense slums around Mumbai, where living conditions are much worse than those of the ‘favelas’ of Brazil’s big cities or the ‘villas miserias’ in other Latin American urban areas, proved shocking to many of the foreign WSF participants.

The precarious characteristics of the slums were repeated at the WSF site, where much of the construction was simply posts and canvas in the middle of suffocating clouds of dust, underscoring the urgency and the enormity of the challenges to create "another possible world", the mission of the thousands of activists gathered here.

The repetition of well-known ideas during the main conferences, and their low attendance -contrasting with the multitudes to be found outside the meeting halls – strengthened the conviction of many that the original WSF formula has been exhausted, that its format and methods must change.

The WSF, which returns next year to Porto Alegre, where it was held its first three years, is not set up as an organisation that adopts resolutions or political positions, nor does it act on its own behalf. Instead, it is simply a meeting to promote mutual knowledge and articulation of civil society groups and social movements, which can indeed make decisions and take action.

But the main concern now is how to stimulate action through the networks that have formed within the WSF amongst individuals and groups dedicated to the same issues.

If some system of consultations could be implemented to identify 10 issues of greater weight and which generate most consensus, it would be a big step towards programming actions and campaigns, says Sergio Haddad, head of Education Action, a Brazilian NGO..

Portuguese sociologist Boaventura Sousa Santos, one of the WSF’s original proponents, believes that with the electronic media available today, votes can be held during the next Forums, "referendums on proposals of collective action," which would reinforce the campaigns carried out by the social networks.

These referendums would mean the internal democratisation of the WSF, "an experiment in transnational participatory democracy," said the professor from the University of Coimbra in an IPS interview.

There are issues that demand intensifying the existing international campaigns, such as war, privatisation of water and global environmental problems, according to the most varied demonstrations in Mumbai this past week.

Cândido Grzybowski, director of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE) and member of the WSF International Council, defends the notion of changing the Forum’s format, such as placing greater importance on workshops, and less on the main conferences, which tend to focus on star personalities.

In Mumbai, Grzybowski moderated a roundtable discussion involving four social movements, whose representatives debated the difficulties of collaborating and working together.

Representatives of feminists, trade unionists, sexual minorities and the Dalit (India’s ‘untouchables, its lowest caste), accused each other of discrimination and prejudice, and confessed their own limitations and internal divisions during the open debate..

It was a novelty for the WSF. Grzybowski believes the ideal is to create this sort of dialogue between the panellists and the public in attendance.

The general feeling is that by staging the event this year in Mumbai, the WSF has been "globalised", but now the means must be found to make it more productive and proving that "another world is possible".

Repeating the formula and the same themes of previous conferences would be a step backwards, and would threaten the relevance of the WSF. This is the worry of many of the Brazilian delegates, who now have the weighty responsibility of organising an innovative WSF in Porto Alegre in 2005.