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Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (January 2010)The World Social Forum (WSF) is an annual meeting, based in Brazil, which defines itself as "an opened space – plural, diverse, non-governmental and non-partisan – that stimulates the decentralized debate, reflection, proposals building, experiences exchange and alliances among movements and organizations engaged in concrete actions towards a more solidary, democratic and fair world....a permanent space and process to build alternatives to neoliberalism."[1] It is held by members of the alter-globalization movement (also referred to as the global justice movement) who come together to coordinate world campaigns, share and refine organizing strategies, and inform each other about movements from around the world and their issues. It tends to meet in January at the same time as its "great capitalist rival", the Word Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. This date is usually picked in hopes that having a meeting that promotes alternative answers to world economic problems opposite the World Economic Forum will help the WSF's ideas get better coverage in the news media.
Contents
[hide][edit] History
Originated by Oded Grajew, the first WSF was held from 25 January to 30 January 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, organized by many groups including the French Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC). The WSF was sponsored, in part, by the Porto Alegre government, led by the Brazilian Worker's Party (PT). The town was experimenting with an innovative model for local government which combined the traditional representative institutions with the participation of open assemblies of the people. 12,000 people attended from around the world. At the time, Brazil was also in a moment of transformation that later would lead to the electoral victory of the PT candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The World Social Forum is a self-conscious effort to develop an alternative future that can be supported by the variety of participants as demonstrated by the charter: "Reinventing Democracy". This "reinvention" has been described as "the radical transformation of the existing class, gender and racialized relations of power that prohibit the full functioning of democracy".
The second WSF, also held in Porto Alegre from 31 January to 5 February 2002, had over 12,000 official delegates representing people from 123 countries, 60,000 attendees, 652 workshops, and 27 talks. Among the 500 American delegates several were selected to be members of the forum's "international council", made up of a rather large number of organizations. Among those represented were Ralph Nader's Public Citizen organization (Medea Benjamin and Linda Chavez-Thompson), the Brazilian NGO Ibase (Cândido Grzybowski and Moema Miranda), the Brazilian association of entrepeurs for citizenship CIVES (Oded Grajew, founder of the WSF), the Brazilian Commission on Justice and Peace (Francisco Whitaker), ATTAC (Christophe Aguiton), CRID France (Gustave Massiah), Focus on the Global South Thailand (Nicola Bullard), and the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World (Gustavo Marín). Members of the AFL-CIO and the SEIU were also very active. The Ford Foundation funded $500,000 for the next meeting.
The third WSF was again held in Porto Alegre, in January 2003. There were many parallel workshops, including, for example the Life After Capitalism workshop, which proposed focused discussion on non-communist, non-capitalist, participative possibilities for different aspects of social, political, economic, communication structures.[2] Among the speakers was American linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky.
The fourth WSF was held in Mumbai, India, from 16 January to 21 January 2004. The attendance was expected to be 75,000 and it shot over by thousands. The cultural diversity was one notable aspect of the forum. A notable decision that was taken was the stand on Free Software. One of the key speakers at the WSF 2004 was Joseph Stiglitz.
The fifth World Social Forum 2005 was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil between 26 January and 31 January. There were 155,000 registered participants at the Forum, with most coming from Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Uruguay, and France. A number of participants in the forum released the Porto Alegre Manifesto.
The sixth World Social Forum was "polycentric", held in January 2006 in Caracas (Venezuela) and Bamako (Mali), and in March 2006, in Karachi (Pakistan). The Forum in Pakistan was delayed to March because of the Kashmir earthquake that had recently occurred in the area.[3]
The seventh World Social Forum was held in Nairobi, Kenya in January 2007. There were 66,000 registered attendees, and 1,400 participating organizations from 110 countries, making it the most globally representative WSF so far.[4] It was criticized as being 'an NGO fair'[5] and movements of the poor in Kenya and South Africa mounted vigorous protests against some of the NGOs that attended and, in their view, dominated the forum in the name of the African poor.
The eighth World Social Forum in 2008 was not organized at a particular place, but globally, which means by thousands of autonomous local organizations, on or around January 26. They are also known as the Global Call for Action.[6]
The ninth World Social Forum took place in the Brazilian city of Belém, located in the Amazon rainforest, between January 27 and February 1, 2009.[7]
In 2011 the World Social Forum is being held in Dakar, Senegal.
Since 2001, the United Nations has had a presence at the WSF through UNESCO, showing the institutional credibility achieved by the forum, seen by UNESCO as a "prime opportunity for dialogue and a laboratory of ideas for the renewal of public policies" through "critical reflection on the future of societies we want to create and for elaborating proposals in search of solidarity, justice, peace and human rights".[8]
[edit] Regional Social Forums
The WSF has prompted the organizing of many regional social forums, including the Americas Social Forum, European Social Forum, the Asian Social Forum, the Mediterranean Social Forum and the Southern Africa Social Forum. There are also many local and national social forums, such as the Italian Social Forum, India Social Forum,[9] Liverpool Social Forum and the Boston Social Forum. The first-ever United States Social Forum took place in Atlanta in June 2007.[10] In 2010 Detroit, Michigan, hosted the United States Social Forum during June 22–26.
Regional forums have taken place in the Southwest,[11] Northwest, Northeast, Midwest and Southeastregions of the United States. The Canadian Social Forum is taking place in June 2010.[12]
Most, though not all, social forums adhere to the WSF Charter of Principles drawn up by the World Social Forum.
[edit] Criticisms
This mural in Seattle's Chinatown echoes the slogan of the World Social Forum: 'Another world is possible'.[edit] Role of NGOs
The WSF has, especially in recent years, been strongly criticised for replacing popular movements of the poor with NGOs (non-governmental organization).[13] Movements of the poor in poorer parts of the world, like Africa, have argued that they are almost completely excluded from the forum and in countries like Kenya and South Africa they have protested against donor funded NGOs that, they argue, determine and dominate African representation at the forum. It has also been argued that NGOs sometimes compete with popular grassroots movements for access to the forum and for influence there.[14]
[edit] Democracy
According to Jai Sen "As in many corporate structures, this gate-keeping takes place not only through articulated rules but also through a ‘tyranny of structurelessness’ where a barely visible leadership makes (and breaks) the rules and decides who is eligible to join, without making the procedures public." [15]
[edit] Race
According to Jai Sen the forum "remains largely led by aging males, mostly white or honorary white, from middle and upper class and caste sections from settler societies around the world".[16]
[edit] 2001 Monsanto Incident
Some activities by activists attending the WSF have also been criticised, such as at the WSF 2001, where activists invaded and destroyed an experimental genetically-modified plantation of the Monsanto Company.[17]
[edit] Further reading
- Richard Falk, (2009), 'Achieving Human Rights', Routledge.
- Mark Butler (2007), "[re]connecting the World Social Forum"[18]
- Jose Correa Leite (2005), The World Social Forum: Strategies of Resistance, Haymarket Books [1]
- Jackie Smith. (2004). The World Social Forum and the challenges of global democracy. Global Networks. 4(4):413-421.
- T. Teivainen. (2002). The World Social Forum and global democratisation: learning from Porto Alegre. Third World Quarterly. 23(4):621-632.
- William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah (2003). Another World is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum
- Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2005). O Fórum Social Mundial: manual de uso, Cortez Editora.
- Sen, Jai, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar & Peter Waterman (eds). 2004. The World Social Forum: Challenging Empires. New Delhi: The Viveka Foundation.
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://www.fsm2009amazonia.org.br/what-the-wsf-is
- ^ http://www.zmag.org/lacsite.htm
- ^ http://www.wsf2006karachi.org/
- ^ Frank Joyce. article on Alternet. Retrieved 2007-02-16.
- ^ "PZN - World Social Forum: just another NGO fair?". Pambazuka.org. 2007-01-26. http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/39464. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
- ^ "Jan. 26, 2008 - Act together for another world! | WSF2008". WSF2008<!. 2008-01-26. http://wsf2008.net/eng/home. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
- ^ "World Social Forum 2009"[dead link]
- ^ "UNESCO and the World Social Forum page". Portal.unesco.org. 2007-03-07. http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-URL_ID=7360&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
- ^ http://www.wsfindia.org/
- ^ http://www.ussf2007.org
- ^ http://forosocialfronterizo.com/
- ^ http://www.socialforum.ca
- ^ Mzonke Poni on the World Social Forum
- ^ Abahlali baseMjondolo (2007-03-06). "Article by David Ntseng on NGOs and grassroots movements at the forum". Abahlali.org. http://abahlali.org/node/845. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
- ^ http://p2pfoundation.net/Engaging_Critically_with_the_Reality_and_Concept_of_Civil_SocietyInterrogating the Civil. Engaging Critically with the Reality and Concept of Civil Society], Jai Sen and Peter Waterman, eds, (2010) - Worlds of Movement, Worlds in Movement. Volume 4 in the Challenging Empires series. New Delhi : OpenWord
- ^ the Civil. Engaging Critically with the Reality and Concept of Civil Society, Jai Sen and Peter Waterman, eds, (2010) - Worlds of Movement, Worlds in Movement. Volume 4 in the Challenging Empires series. New Delhi : OpenWord
- ^ "Folha Online - Brasil - José Bové, militante francês antiglobalização, chega a Porto Alegre - 28 January 2002". .folha.uol.com.br. 2002-01-28. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u28760.shl. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
- ^ Abahlali baseMjondolo (2007-02-08). "[re]connecting the World Social Forum | Abahlali baseMjondolo". Abahlali.org. http://abahlali.org/node/619. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
[edit] See also
- Category:Social forums - other social forums
[edit] External links
- Official
- News reports
- Past forums
- WSF 2009
- WSF 2008
- wsf-2007
- WSF in Nairobi, 20-25 January 2007
- World Social Forum 2009 Belém, Brazil - from January 27 until February 1, 2009
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Saturday, 12 February 2011
World Social Forum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Senegal: World Social Forum 2011: One Week of Activism in Dakar · Global Voices
Senegal: World Social Forum 2011: One Week of Activism in Dakar
Dakar, the capital of the West African nation of Senegal, has been bustling with activists and campaigners from across the globe, gathered under the banner of the World Social Forum to say another world is possible. The tone to this meeting of anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist groups was set by Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia, who told a cheering crowd at the opening of the event that capitalism was in agony and this was sustained by his leftist companion, Ignacio Lula Da Silva, who on Monday told participants at the Forum that the Global Finacial crisis proves that capitalism is broken.
Women's rights activists at the opening march of the WSF 2011
PoliticalLeft posts some of the striking quotes by the two Latin American leaders who rose from trade unionism to the presidency of their countries and also spells out the difference between the forum and the Davos Economic Forum:
While the latter draws CEOs who sleep in four-star hotels and take turns on the Swiss slopes, the participants in the World Social Forum are happy to camp on the sides of roads or sleep with locals in order to take part in the yearly anti-capitalist gathering. Instead of suits, they arrive wearing tie-die shirts and trousers of organic cotton, like Lula who addressed the cheering crowd in an informal white shirt. Presentations are frequently ad lib, including a fiery impromptu speech by Bolivian President Evo Morales on Sunday who told the assembled crowd that capitalism was in its death throes. “We can see it with the global financial crisis. We can see it with climate change and global warming,” said Morales, who in 2005 became the first leader to be elected from Bolivia's indigenous majority.
At a time when many countries in the northern hemisphere are toughening rules to close their doors to an ever growing number of migrants from the southern hemisphere, migration has been among the top issues discussed at the Forum. According to BAJI blogs there have also been workshops on inter-Africa migration that exposed the complicity of West and North African countries in the violation of migrants’ rights:
“The North African countries–Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria and Libya have signed undisclosed bilateral agreements with European countries–Italy, Spain, Malta, Portugal and France to act as their border control agents. North African countries routinely deport Senegalese migrants to their home countries, with many violations of their human rights. Migrants from all over West Africa are deported to Mali without regard to their nationality. The migrants are often brutalized, robbed and dumped at the borders. In exchange for their services, the North African countries receive development aid and military aid from European countries. Senegal has also signed agreements with some European countries to accept deported Senegalese migrants and to provide Frontex, the European Union border control agency, complete and free access to its territory.”
On Thursday, the Poverty Matters blog on the website of the UK newspaper The Guardian reported that migrants, small-scale fishermen and participants from the World Social Forum are converging on the streets and on the coast by the Frontex office in Dakar, Senegal, for a demonstration against the EU border agency:
“The protest's organisers say border patrols off the coast of Senegal and Mauritania are forcing pirogues to turn back on the open sea, which represents a risk to migrants seeking to make the journey to Europe and to local fishermen who take to the coastal waters to earn their living.”
Another world is possible. Photo courtesy of Priority Africa Network.
Landgrabbing has been the other theme that has drawn a lot of interest from priests under the auspices of CARITAS to well-known non-governmental organizations (NGO) such as Oxfam, ActionAid and La Via Campesina whose activists blogged the purpose of their presence at the Dakar World Social Forum:
“Farmers of the world against land grabbing: land for those who work the land and feed the world,” as one of their banners exclaimed. This theme will be developed through various workshops that La Via Campesina will host throughout the forum. In addition, La Via Campesina will focus on climate change, violence against women, and the need to preserve peasants local seeds.”
Amid the discussions and protests, there is however a feeling among many participants that the level of organization of the forum wasn’t the best. The event is being staged at the Dakar Chiekh Anta Diop University whose lecture rooms were supposed to host the thousands of workshops but this hasn’t been really the case. Classes continued and many discussions had to be cancelled or re-scheduled as a result.
Mbong Akiy blogging for GreenPeace had noticed this from day one:
“The logistics on the first day of the event left me a little worried. Heaps of rubbish could be spotted at different locations of the forum site while stands were erected on dusty ground, tables and chairs required by NGO’s to decorate their stands were either too few or simply unavailable.”
Dis-organisation has not prevented citizen actors from to acting. Ryan Schlief and Prsicila Neri traveled to Dakar to meet with key allies in their forced evictions campaign and learn more about how activists around the world are using video in their advocacy on forced evictions and they have succeeded to discuss the issue and produced a video with Zimbabwean activists as seen here.
WITNESS and other land and housing rights organizations signed a public statement demanding a stop to the planned forced eviction of thousands in Ghana’s capital city Accra. The signature campaign was organized at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal:
The communities living along the railway were told on 21 January to leave their homes to make way for the redevelopment of the country’s railway system planned for February. It was reported that the forced eviction possibly occurring this week would affect as many as 25,000 people.
The World Social Forum usually receives mainstream media attention at the begging and at the end but several participants have been tweeting and Facebooking their experiences in Dakar, while the Panos Institute West Africa through a group of African journalists has been covering the event in print (a forum daily), on radio and online including a Liveblog.
Other bloggers in Dakar are Nikke Alex who blogs at Thoughts of a Diné Woman and D2D - World Social Forum Dakar 2011. Black Alliance has beautiful photos from Dakar on their Flickr page.
Technical Requirements | OpenPublish - Open-Source Online News Publishing
Technical Requirements
OpenPublish is a Drupal distribution. As such OpenPublish can run on most environments properly configured to run the latest version of Drupal. However, since OpenPublishe adds large amount of functionality on top of Drupal core, it needs more resources than bare-bones Drupal. Detailed list of recommended configurations is as follows:
- Minimum of a dual-core processor with 2GB RAM (Linux) or 4GB RAM (Windows). Actual hardware requirements will vary depending on the amount of content and traffic.
- Web Server - Apache 1.3 or Apache 2.x. We have reports of successful run on the latest version of Nginx. Drupal can also run on Microsoft IIS. Apache is still the most tested platform and strongly recommended.
- PHP – Version 5.2.x (recommended) or 5.3
- Database – MySQL 4.1 or 5.0, though MySQL 5.0 is strongly recommended.
- Installing a PHP code optimizer like APC is highly recommended, especially for production use.
- Your memory_limit variable, in php.ini needs to be at least 128M, but 220M is recommended.
- If you are still having problems (seeing "white screens of death" or errors during installation) try setting:
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Ben Aldiss in publications - TES Connect
TES Magazine: 30 June 2006 Making hay
Thirteen thousand years of agriculture is too precious a heritage to lose.
Ben Aldiss is an ecologist with a PhD in wasps and an expert adviser fo...
TES Magazine: 4 March 2005 Whodunit with a difference
Dorset students had a day to explore ethical issues in biotechnology and use cutting-edge genetics equipment. Ben Aldiss reports.
A magnificent Rw...
TES Magazine: 13 July 2007 Scotching myths about moths
Moths are thought to have something of the night about them, but observing these prolific, colourful insects will reward pupils and teachers, says Be...
TES Magazine: 17 June 2005 Superior beeing
Ben Aldiss describes the life cycle of one of the planet's most useful insects
If there is one creature teachers would like their pupils to emulat...
TES Magazine: 2 December 2005 Friend of the Earth
England's ancient patchwork of hedges has played a vital role in the country's history and is home to a huge range of plants and wildlife - but it ha...
TES Magazine: 18 June 2004 Sting in the tale
Next time a wasp comes sniffing around your roof and walls, think about it as a resource for next year's teaching, says Ben Aldiss
Wasps are misu...
TES Magazine: 18 June 2004 Enlightening e-sources
Schoolscience www.schoolscience.co.uk
Schoolscience was set up by ISE (Industry Supports Education) "To provide information about science learned...
TES Magazine: 2 February 2007 Can you dig it?
Young agricultural experts are thin on the ground nowadays, but all that could change, says Ben Aldiss, if farming programmes are encouraged
Can y...
TES Magazine: 25 February 2005 Survival tactics
Ben Aldiss explains some of Nature's tricks that help animals cope in cold weather
What's the weather doing today? This winter has been unpredicta...
TES Magazine: 3 December 2004 Season's sustenance
The plants we associate with Christmas offer a lot more than mere decoration. They play a vital role in the survival of wildlife through the bleak mi...
The lost 12,000 who should be in school - News - TES Connect
The lost 12,000 who should be in school
News | Published in The TES on 11 February, 2011 | By: Kerra Maddern
Section:
News
And hundreds of those ‘missing from education’ can’t be traced, TES reveals
Almost 12,000 children are officially classed as missing from school, a TES investigation has found.
The numbers have triggered growing concern for the “lost pupils”, with children’s charities and Ofsted inspectors warning they are at “serious risk” of physical, sexual and mental harm.
The statistics, obtained from every local authority using the Freedom of Information Act, show 11,911 pupils are missing from school, with large urban areas the worst offenders.
There are a number of reasons that children may be registered as “missing from education” - defined as those that have not had any kind of schooling for a month - including explanations as simple as being forced to wait for a school place after moving or being withheld from education by their parents.
But the new figures show the startling fact that nearly 1,500 children have completely dropped out of the system and cannot be traced.
Leicester has the highest number of children missing from education. Some 2,611 are not in school. Nine other local authorities - Birmingham, Kent, Bradford, Brent, Sheffield, Southampton, Doncaster and Westminster - each have more than 360 missing children. Some 69 local authorities claim to have none.
Every council is legally required to record the number of children in the area not in school, but there is no national system to help officers trace them or to share information with another local authority.
Former Barnardo’s chief executive Martin Narey described the new total as “deeply troubling”.
“School is somewhere that every child needs to be every day,” he said. “For many of our most vulnerable young people it is the only stability they know, the only time when a little chaos is taken out of their lives, the only time when they are required to behave reasonably.
“It is the one place where poor life expectations can be reversed. So for thousands of children - inevitably those most in need of education - to be missing from school is deeply troubling. We need to keep children in school or, when removal is necessary, as it sometimes is, ensure alternative provision is always made available in a timely manner.”
And Enver Solomon, policy director at the Children’s Society, said: “It is vital children don’t disappear from the school roll. There is a danger this could happen to vulnerable pupils if schools just focus on attainment and their welfare is overlooked.
“The most marginalised children have the most complex needs: they must be given additional help to remain in education.”
The last official figures from the Government - made five years ago - estimated that there were 10,000 children missing from education.
A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “We expect local authorities to follow procedures to identify children in their area who may be out of school, ensure that these children are not missing out on their education, and allocate a place as quickly as possible.”
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