World Student Community for Sustainable Development

Clarifying concepts and stimulating actions.

by Gisele Alarcon

The World Social Forum and its origins

The World Social Forum was initiated in Brazil, in a historical context where eight organizations of the civil society [1] evaluated the necessity to advance in the protest movements transforming them into less punctual and more effective processes. These organizations were unsatisfied with the world political and economical trends that happen under the control and domain of the capital interest. Their idea was to develop a forum where the human being and not the capital would be the center of the quarrels. Within this purpose this group considered to make a World Social Forum as an opposition to the World Economic Forum that annually congregates entrepreneurs and representatives of the world elite in the small ski resort of Davos, in Switzerland.

With this purpose in mind and a project in hands, the 8 Brazilian organizations presented it in the international congress of civil society organizations, also carried out in Switzerland, in the year 2000. The international congress not only liked the proposal as they supported the accomplishment of the Forum in the following year, concomitantly with World Economic Forum.

In January 2001, in southern Brazil, Porto Alegre, the number of participants of the first Social Forum reached about 20 thousand people, ten thousand more than what was expected. In the following year, it congregated 50 thousand people and in 2003, 100 thousand. The great and more important point is that these numbers do not only represent an increasing quantity, but surely a qualitative growth of the participants in the form of many sectors of the national and international civil society organizations. In the words of Francisco Whitaker, member of the Brazilian Commission of Justice and Peace – CBJB, “the Forum changed into something that represents much more than a social movement, it is an open space that aims to congregate and provide articulation between various groups of the civil society that search to new political, economical and social ways for the humanity†.

Searching for Change

Soon after the accomplishment of the first Forum, the brazilian organizer commission, together with international organizations, decided to invest in the propagation of the Forum. The idea was to use the Forum as a world-wide tool to increase people awareness on the necessity of discussing and acting to build a better world. As result of the collective effort of diverse regional organizations, thematic and regional meetings started to happen in many different parts of the globe. Thus, in the year 2001 the First African Social Forum and the Pan-Amazonic Forum took place in Africa and South America, respectively. In the following year, the European Social Forum congregated sixty thousand people and Asian Forum, twenty thousand. From 2002 on, thematic Forums started to mobilize people in local areas, discussing topics as the consequences of the FMI neoliberal politics in Argentina, or still, the problems originated with the establishment of Israel, among others.

The importance of the Social Forum goes beyond increasing awareness. It has the capacity to mobilize different social actors, promote the establishment of alliances, fortify social movements and make possible an international interaction net which fights with different “guns†to reach a different Pattern of development. The proposals and partnerships solidified during the Forum are pragmatic and allow the continuity of daily pre-established actions.

The connection with sustainable development?

The great focus of the Forum, as the name says, is the social matters. The main subjects turn around the necessities of the human beings in this planet. The Forum searches for another way of living, more joust with the human beings and everything what encircles them. Within this perspective, I must say that the Forum searches for a sustainable way of life, for another route where society and nature live together in harmony. The concept “sustainable development†is almost a “cliché†. It is used by multinationals, politicians and enterprises, which are far from reaching a joust relation with its consumers, workers and the environment. What I can see through the Forum and through my own life-experiences is that we are still far of a fair society. The sustainable development remains as an academic tool and as a state desired by some groups, organized or not, of the civil society. In the Forum, it is possible to observe the different “fights†that go on in the direction of what we consider sustainability. The fights for human rights, democracy, social equality, biodiversity conservation, common access to clean water, no wars, all these “slogans†represent the interest that our planetary society has to create a different, and therefore sustainable, world. The Forum allows that these “fights†come together in an open quarrel to establish partnerships and action plans, everything under the perspective that “another world is possible”.

- Gisele Alarcon

P.S.
I would like to present here some personal perceptions on the World Social Forum. I hope they help to raise in the readers the desire of joining the actions that happen nowadays. There are available many news on the regional and thematic Social Forums. They are always opened for workshops proposals and voluntary work. Their website is: http://www.wsfindia.org/ If you to want to exchange ideas or make questions, do not hesitate, my personal address is: giselealarcon@hotmail.com

Footnotes

[1] ABONG (Brazilian Association of the Non-governmental Organizations), ATTACK, CBJB (Brazilian Association of Justice and Peace); CIVES ( Brazilian Association of Enterprises to Citizenship); CUT (Unified Central of Labour); IBASE (Brazilian Institute of Social and Economical Analyses), MST (Non land Movement) and the Brazilian Net of Justice and Human Rights.