Social Forum

Since the World Social Forum was launched in June 2000, at the Alternative Social Summit in Geneva, coinciding with the United Nations Assembly on Social Development, ten years have passed. In this decade, the world has changed and the context in which the World Social Forum (WSF) emerged is different to that of today. - read article...

After a period of remarkable expansion, the process of the World Social Forum (WSF) has stalled. The balance sheet of the most recent big assemblies turns out to be very contrasting – we can say, simplifying a lot, politically negative in the case of Nairobi (Kenya) in 2007 and positive in the case of Belem (Brazil) two years later. - read article...

Éric Toussaint argues in favour of globalising the anti-capitalist Left and against the social-liberal or social democrat Left, as is to be found in governments such as those of Lula, Gordon Brown, Daniel Ortega or José-Luis Zapatero. - read article...

The Belém declaration is different. It includes a fundamental diagnosis of the crisis of the capitalist system and a clear position as to how to move out of it. Its title and subtitle sum up this new approach: We won’t pay for the crisis! The rich have to pay for it! Anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, feminist, environmentalist and socialist alternatives are necessary! - read article...

Declaration of the Assembly of Social Movements at the World Social Forum 2009, Belem, Brazil. - read article...

The World Social Forum (WSF) held in Belem is a very significant one. It’s the first WSF held after the outburst of the 2008 economic crisis. This crisis made evident the total failure of neo-liberalism and the destructive character of global capitalism. Besides, Brazilian Amazon is a privileged place to highlight the link between social and ecological crisis. - read article...

Even though the level of participation in the European Social Forum in Malmö (Sweden) was limited, this framework remains irreplaceable in order to permit a sharing of experiences and to support the organization of mobilizations on a European scale. - read article...

Abortion is a sensitive issue, and is still prohibited in some parts of the European Union. Conservative groups are fighting hard for stricter abortion legislation. However, the groups defending women’s right to choose are also strong. The EU itself prefers to steer clear of the issue. - read article...

A number of high-profile judicial cases have recently sharpened the question of whether or not the European Union protects collective bargaining agreements on the job market. This issue might be especially relevant to the Nordic countries since the job markets here to a large extent are regulated according to collective agreements. - read article...

The 5th European Social Forum (ESF) which has just ended in Malmö (Sweden) is a good occasion to reflect on the trajectory and challenges of an initiative that has allowed activists and movements from across the continent to meet. - read article...

Created in 2001, after two consecutive years of big mobilisations against the institutions symbolising neoliberal globalisation, the WSF began modestly (15,000 participants) at the first WSF in late January 2001 in Porto Alegre. The process then consolidated itself very rapidly, first in Latin America and in Europe (1st ESF in November 2002 in Florence) and reached South Asia in 2003 (1st Asian Social Forum in 2003 in Hyderabad). - read article...

Over twenty thousand anti-globalisation activists from across Europe descended on Alexandra Palace for the Third European Social Forum. - read article...

The meeting of the social movements at the WSF in Porto Alegre last month made established a widespread agenda of mobilisations for the coming year. - read article...

The anti-war assembly meeting at the WSF in Porto Alegre made a detailed call for action against occupation and the new US war threats, especially for the weekend of 19/20 March. - read article...

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez roused the WSF particpants with a call to go beyond capitalism - read article...

The World Social Forum is now on in Porto Alegre. Estimates of numbers range from 100,000 to 150,000. A sharp debate is taking place about the role of the Lula government and the role of the Workers Party (PT). - read article...

The first Mediterranean Social Forum (FSMed) was held in Barcelona on June 16-18 2005, attracting between 4,500 and 5,000 participants (delegates, volunteers, interpreters, journalists and so on), with a very significant presence of representatives from organizations from the southern, eastern and northern shores of the Mediterranean. - read article...

This year the World Social Forum is being held on three continents. Before the Forum in Caracas, the first big gathering of the global justice movement took place in Bamako, the capital of Mali, from 19th to 23rd January. - read article...

The third leg of the polycentric World Social Forum will take place in Karachi from March 24-29. The six day event, a gathering of civil society organizations from around the world, will be held to reinforce the global movement against globalization, wars, colonization, denial of human rights and a host of other issues. - read article...

Over 35000 attended WSF Karachi, an unprecedented event in the history of Pakistan during the course of five days. Over 300 events attracted hundreds of activists from different walk of life. Activists from 59 countries participated in the event. - read article...

The success of the 4th European Social Forum (Athens 4-7th May) exceeded even the most optimistic expectations. More than 35,000 participants attended the seminars and workshops. - read article...

The 7th WSF ended on 25 January in the Kenyan capital. It was followed by a two-day meeting of the International Council (IC), a decision-making body consisting of about one hundred organizations from all continents. After a first contradictory assessment of the forum, the IC confirmed its decision to launch a global Day of Action towards the end of January 2008. - read article...

The assembly of the social movements at the World Social Forum in Niarobi outlined its perspectives and contested aspects of the Forum’s participation and conduct. - read article...

About 40,000 people came to Nairobi for the 7th World Social Forum (WSF). It was characterized by a big participation by Africans and by rich debates. The global justice movement has planned out a series of offensive mobilizations. - read article...

This is the first time that so many Africans, men and women, had come to a World Social Forum. The attendance was five to seven times bigger than in the preceding African Social Forums and was more representative of the diversities of the countries of Africa. - read article...

The arrogance of neoliberalism, although certainly challenged in some Latin American countries, seems to face a cooling of opposition everywhere else, as if there was an exhaustion of the “expansive wave” of the movement for global justice. What can we expect from the second World Social Forum to be held in Africa (following its polycentric version in 2006, held in Bamako, Caracas and Karachi), where all the evils of globalisation in its different phases are concentrated? Will it give a second breath to the movement, a greater and firmer radicalism in the area of alternatives? - read article...

The second Russian Social Forum has just come to an end in St.Petersburg. Despite various obstacles put by the state authorities (including arbitrary detention of activists and other forms of police repression), more than a thousand people from different regions of Russia, and also from many other countries, attended the gathering. - read article...

In spite of widespread apprehension beforehand in the global justice movement, the Athens forum did not show that the process of the European Social Forum (ESF) was running out of steam. The ESF, which took place from the 3rd to the 7th of May, was a success both for the Greek organizers and for the European global justice movement. - read article...

After Bamako (Mali) and Caracas (Venezuela) last January, Karachi constituted the third wing of the World Social Forum, in its “polycentric” version of 2006. Meeting from March 24-29 in the main industrial centre and port of Pakistan, it proved to be a success both in terms of numbers and of politics. - read article...

Unlike the two other regional sites, the Polycentric World Social Forum in Bamako was a first on the African continent. As the prelude to the 2007 World Social Forum, which will take place in Nairobi (Kenya), it was a trial run for the movement for global justice on the continent. So, what impressions has it left? - read article...

The Caracas component of the polycentric 2006 World Social Forum took place from January 24th to 29th. Its exceptional character derived from the fact that it was taking place at the heart of the revolutionary process that Venezuela is experiencing. - read article...

The next World Social Forum is to be... polycentric. It will take place in 2006, in a «decentralised» fashion, in Caracas (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela), Bamako (Mali) and Karachi (Pakistan). - read article...

At the Mediterranean Social Forum (FSMed), Catalan and Italian activists from the World March of Women pressed for a plenary session devoted to the question of women’s rights in the Mediterranean. A woman from Iraq spoke on the terrible situation created by the war, for everybody but particularly for women, whether in US prisons or as victims of sexual aggression. - read article...

The World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre represented a significant step forward. It still expresses the offensive frame of mind that has characterised it since the beginning, in 2001, even though the bourgeoisie is still dealing severe blows against the workers’ and peoples’ movements. - read article...

Alex Callinicos argues for the continued primacy of the fight against imperialism in the ESF process. - read article...

"If I stress the importance of the social question in Europe, it is not to underplay the importance of the war, but because it is impossible to build a counter-force to neoliberalism in Europe, on the level of the EU, if you do not address the living and working conditions of the mass of the working people in Europe itself." - read article...

The 3rd Social Forum took place this year from 15th to 17th October in London. It underlined once again the vitality of the global justice movement and its strengthened links with the trade-union movement. - read article...

Among the various plenaries, seminars and working groups at the European Social Forum was a discussion - ‘Strategies for Social Transformation’. - read article...

Transcript of a speech in the debate on ‘Strategies for Social Transformation’, at the European Social Forum, October 16, 2004. - read article...

The fourth World Social Forum was held in Mumbai in January 2004. Moving it from Porto Alegre to a different continent in which the social forum movement was less developed and much more disparate, and notably to the specific political situation in India, was a real challenge - successfully met. - read article...

There has been a broad pluralistic meeting of international radical anti-capitalist organizations from different ideological origins for the first time taking advantage of the opportunity offered by the meeting of the WSF. - read article...

January 20, 2004, an international meeting of radical, anti-capitalist, political parties took place in Mumbai, India, at the invitation of 18 parties from Asia-Pacific and Europe. The first aim of this meeting was to help organizations from different continents to get in touch, to have an initial exchange of views about what each organization expects from a process of international cooperation, to expand and deepen the existing links without any attempt to formalize them, and to begin to discuss common actions. - read article...

The fourth World Social Forum was unquestionably a political success, as attested to by the commentaries and impressions of almost all its participants. - read article...

At its fourth annual gathering, held January 16-21, 2004 in India’s poverty-ridden financial hub of Mumbai, the World Social Forum (WSF) radicalized its demands and extended its reach and inter-group cooperation. - read article...

After the immense success of the first European Social Forum (ESF) in Florence last year, the 2003 ESF in Paris-St-Denis-Ivry-Bobigny represented an unprecedented advance in the construction of a European social movement at two levels. - read article...

More than 3,000 women and about 150 men took part in the European Assembly for Women’s Rights that took place on November 12, 2003 in Bobigny on the outskirts of Paris. This was an undeniable success for an event that constitutes very much a “first” as a feminist initiative in Europe. Let’s look at where it came from... - read article...

For the first time in 20 years, a counter-offensive has been launched to stop the disasters that are threatening us: war, neoliberal policies, and ecological catastrophe. - read article...

One year after its first gathering in Florence, the second European Social Forum will be held November 13-15 in Paris and in three towns of what was once the ’red belt’: Saint-Denis, Bobigny and Ivry. - read article...

Why a women’s day at the European Social Forum (ESF)? The idea of organizing a whole day of women’s debates inside the ESF emerged in the context of the limited space for discussion in workshops or in seminars provided by the first ESF at Florence. - read article...

The first Asian Social Forum (ASF) - just-concluded - saw a unique confluence of grassroots social movements, people’s organizations and radical NGOs which interrogate globalization and counter pose equality, human rights and justice to the shop-worn agendas of trans-national big business. - read article...

On the eve of the European Social Forum, Italy’s Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) organized a two-day meeting (on November 5-6, 2002). On the agenda: the EU and the question of war, social and citizens’ rights, an economic perspective and a political alternative; and a proposal for a European political party. - read article...

The document ’Contribution of the PRC to the Discussion on a European Alternative Left’ starts from the new world situation, where ’the first war of the epoch of globalization, a policy of global and permanent war’ is posed. - read article...

The European Social Forum held in Florence in November 2002 will go down in the history of the workers’ movement. - read article...

At the end of the Europan Social Forum a meeting of the social movements made two calls - opposition to a Europe based on neo-liberalism, and for an end to war! - read article...

Flavia d’Angeli is a member of the national leadership of the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista of Italy and Olivier Besancenot was candidate for the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR - French section of the Fourth International) at the French presidential elections in 2002. Shortly before the European Social Forum, they spoke about their hopes for the event. - read article...

During the ESF, there will be a forum ’Migrants against Fortress Europe’. We will discuss the following subjects: freedom of movement and residence; the right to asylum; citizenship; independence of immigrant women; equal rights. On each of these points, we will seek to formulate joint demands which would encourage Europe-wide mobilizations. - read article...

Following the success of the second Word Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January of this year, the first European Social Forum (ESF), will take place in Florence, Italy from November 7-10, 2002. The movements involved in its preparation met in Vienna on May 11-12, 2002, with a full agenda. - read article...

"THIS is an International that isn’t controlled by anyone". That’s how the Peruvian Trotskyist and veteran peasant leader Hugo Blanco described the World Social Forum held for a second time in Porto Alegre, Brazil from January 31 to February 5, 2002. - read article...

THE second World Social Forum at Porto Alegre opens a new phase in the anti-globalisation movement. Both in political and media terms, the event was a success, with about 15,000 thousand delegates, 5,000 organizations and more than 50,000 participants. - read article...

ONE source of friction at the II WSF in Porto Alegre was the decision taken by the organisers to exclude the political parties of the Sao Paulo Forum, on the grounds that the gathering was one of social movements and not political parties. - read article...

THE 2002 Word Social Forum in Porto Alegre was a triumph on three levels: in terms of participation, much bigger than in 2001, depth of political and theoretical reflection on the main problems of our epoch and definition of forthcoming events and future objectives. - read article...

Numerous members of sections or organizations with links to the Fourth International participated actively in the Forum in Porto Alegre. - read article...

A great leap forward was made between the first World Social Forum (WSF) last year and the second, which took place in Brazil from January 31 to February 5, 2002. A new international solidarity was developed. - read article...

In the face of continuing deterioration in the living conditions of people, we, social movements from all around the world, have come together in the tens of thousands at the second World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. We are here in spite of the attempts to break our solidarity. - read article...

There’s no doubt about it. The winds have changed and the horizon is clearing. Only a few years ago, when the neo-liberal counterrevolution was at the height of its arrogance, a World Social Forum of such a magnitude and impact would have been unthinkable. - read article...

No repressive brutality. No riot gas. Neither blows nor arrests as in the mountainous Swiss bunker. Porto Alegre, on the contrary, was a multicolour fiesta of an insolent, chaotic, resistant plurality. Everything was permitted. - read article...

Social forces from around the world have gathered here at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Unions and NGOs, movements and organizations, intellectuals and artists, together we are building a great alliance to create a new society, different from the dominant logic wherein the free-market and money are considered the only measure of worth. - read article...

It was an audacious gamble: bringing together hundreds of representatives of movements opposed to neo-liberal globalisation from all over the planet in a big city in southern Brazil. - read article...

Our articles on the floods in Pakistan have given details of how to send financial aid to the Labour Relief Fund. If it is more convenient for you, you can also send funds through the Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres account. - read article...

Pakistan is facing worst ever floods of its history. Torrential rains have unleashed flash floods in different parts of the country since last three weeks. Water levies broke leaving the people exposed to flood water. More than 12 million people have suffered due to these floods. More than 650,000 houses have collapsed, mainly in villages. Thousands of acres of crops have been destroyed due to flood water. Houses, live-stock such as cattle’s and goats, household goods, clothes, shoes and other items have been destroyed. Residents of villages are currently without drinkable water, food, shelter and in need of clothes. In particular, the situation is dire for children and women and they are in desperate need of food and clothing. Disease is spreading fast in the areas affected due to lack of drinkable water. In particular, flu, fever, diarrhea, cholera have been noted and are spreading. - read article...

An unexpected, unthinkable, yet - concerning current circumstances - quite expectable and natural thing has occurred yesterday night. Three public social activists that have always expressed a consistent antifascist attitude and shunned civil indifference have been detained. - read article...

We, the participants at the Istanbul ESF, affirming that we have a strong engagement aganist all war and occupation and that we are for a politial resolution of the Kurdish issue, have made the following resolution : - read article...

Under the impulse of the World Bank and international capitalist institutions, the Moroccan regime started a privatization process of the universities and attacks against the right to studiy. The announcement of the “Emergency plan” to the university at beginning of the academic year, i.e. of the brutal aggravation of these attacks, put a spark to the powder. The class-struggle trade unionists of fight, organised within the UNEM, are at the forefront of the mobilization against the “Emergency plan”. - read article...