Francine Mestrum

29 October – 1 November 2007

It was certainly not a major meeting of the IC, that is, a meeting with lots of representatives and important decisions to be made. There were many Brazilians, not so many Latinamericans and Europeans, and extremely few Africans and Asians. There are several reasons to explain this situation. First, Belem is not the most easy and cheap place to travel to. It is situated in the North of Brasil, several hours away by plane from Sao Paolo. Especially the people coming from other countries in Latin America often had to travel for 15 to 20 hours …  The bus from Porto Alegre takes 54 hours to arrive in Belem … A second reason may have been the perception of lack of urgency. Since there will be no World Social Forum in 2008, no urgent decisions had to be taken. And one year of time to prepare the WSF of 2009, that will also take place in Belem, may seem a very long time for social movements that are used to react at very short notice. A third reason that cannot be totally excluded is the growing opposition within the IC to a certain kind of interpretation of the ‘open space’ the WSF necessarily has to be.

In fact, there are two possible interpretations of this IC meeting. One can look at it as an exercise in building the process leading up to the WSF 2009 and integrating the Panamazonian forum into it. Another way of looking at the meeting is to see it as a promotional visit to the city of Belem and the Brazilian State of Para.

The first interpretation will be defended by the different representatives of the nine Amazonian States and by all the movements that see the WSF mainly as an integrating process. One evening session was entirely dedicated to the situation in the Amazon region. In that sense the IC meeting surely was a success. The second interpretation will be defended by those who were surprised to be welcomed at the meeting by an official delegation of the State of Para and by the boat trip with small presents we were offered. And though not everyone was happy with it, yes, the public authorities were able to make their point.

But whatever way you look at it, it was a very warm IC, with lots of friendship, a very warm welcome by our Brazilian friends and by the Amazonian organizing committee. The WSF 2009 in Belem is very probably going to be well organized.

 Before the official start of the IC meeting, there was a meeting of the Amazonian organizing committee, and a possibility for those IC members that arrived on time to get to know the future hosts of the WSF.

 The next day most working groups of the IC met and discussed the most urgent questions: resources, communication, expansion, methodology, strategy and assessment. The advantage of a ‘minor’ IC was that it is a lot easier to discuss in a small group of people than with eighty to one hundred people, but the problem obviously is that for some issues not one directly involved member was present.  That was the case with the working group on assessment. The people who had prepared the documents were not in Belem, so it was difficult to make any decisions.

 All the same, some important issues were debated and decided on.

 On Wednesday morning, at 7 o’clock, a tour was organized to visit different places in Belem where the WSF 2009 might be organized.  Two public universities and an amazingly beautiful new convention center. All IC members asked to have as many events of the WSF concentrated in only one ‘territory’ in order to avoid the fragmentation of the Forum.

 In the afternoon formal IC discussions started. The first point on the agenda was the day of action of 26 january2008. This is an excellent opportunity to show the scope and the strength of our movement of movements. The action plan was adopted.  In a couple of weeks a website will be available where all actions can be announced: www.wsf2008.net , Skype chats will be possible, a regular newsletter will be sent around. Some actions have already been decided on, such as a major concert in Rio where more than 50.000 people are expected.  More information can be obtained via globalaction@wsf2008.net.

 The second agenda point on Wednesday afternoon was the nomination of a ‘Liaison group’ on which the discussions started in 2006.

It was stressed that this group was not a decision making body and that it is not representative for the IC or for the Forum. It has to facilitate the communication between the different working groups of the IC and to coordinate and monitor the work of the secretariat. Only operational decisions can be taken by consensus. If there are major divergences, the IC will have to decide.

The original proposal was for a very limited liaison group. However, there were quite some applications, so in the end the proposal was to create a group of 11 effective members and 5 auxiliaries (‘suplentes’). The full members are going to be Ibase, ITUC, OCLAE, Via Campesina, Encuentros Hemisféricos, MMM, Enda, ASC, CUT-Brasil, Focus on the Global South, Arci. The auxiliary members are CBJP, Articulacion feminista Mercosur, Cosatu, KCTU, Terre des Hommes. Even if the members are organizations, names were immediately added to them, so one could see that the gender equality (majority of men) and the geographical balance (overrepresentation of American organizations) are not really respected. How the group will be funded and how it will work still has to be decided.

 The next difficult discussion concerned the resources of the Forum. The first difficulty arises with the limited membership and attendance of the committee. A call was made for candidates. The second difficulty is the lack of responsibility, since too often decisions are made without any idea on how their realization will be funded. The third problem is the financial deficit of former fora, especially Porto Alegre 2005 and Nairobi 2007. An audit is going on, since this point could damage the credibility of the whole Forum process. The Foros de las Americas and the US Social Forum ended with a surplus. And of course, this all leads to the next point: the funding of the WSF 2009. Strict guiding principles should be adopted on the funding of our activities with special attention for private and public companies. The example that was given was that of a mining company, Vale do Rio Doce, that wants to fund the next WSF but that is also sharply criticized by many Brazilian movements for the way it works. It was also stressed that funding is a joint responsibility of all members of the IC and that transparency is needed on the way funds are raised and are spent.

The idea was put forward to fix a ceiling on what a WSF can cost, and that should not amount to many millions of Dollars. The actual costs of the last WSFs are without any proportion to the possibilities of social movements. The costs of WSF 2009 are estimated to be around 10 million Dollars! More use should be made of voluntary workers and solidarity economy and some research should be done on alternative monies.  Also, one single meeting of the IC per year should be sufficient. And we should take care to not let the WSF compete with development money.

 The next reports came from the communication commission and from the methodology group.

Methodology clearly was the most important point. It was decided to hold consultations for the WSF 2009 in order to arrive at a small number of objectives to be met and thus have a major participative exercise. In that way the process of Nairobi can be deepened and improved.

An effort should also be made to integrate the city into the Forum process. Public authorities are already mobilized to start important infrastructural works that will be useful to the Forum.

 Thursday afternoon, after a boat trip in the morning, started with the assessment group. Two documents had been prepared, one on a survey to be organized of all participants of the forum, and one with guiding principles for the organization of future fora. Unfortunately, their authors were not present. It was decided that both documents will be sent around on the mailing lists with a demand for all members to give their contributions. Answers should be sent before December.  These documents should be looked at together with those of the strategy working group and should also take into account the work of the resources committee.

 The Strategy working group had been asked to prepare the political debate to be held at the next IC in Africa. In these discussions, it was clear that many IC members feel that the WSF process is in crisis or has to be reconceptualized. It was proposed to make a new analysis of the changing neoliberal agenda and to see how the WSF can respond to it and whether these answers have to be political or methodological. A new convergence has to be looked for. Some are defending a radicalization of the whole process, even if that stops its enlargement. For example, the feminist struggles are too important to let the ‘pro life’ movements play a role at the Forum. Other points that were discussed were the still dominating role of Europeans and Latin Americans, the question of the WSF within the alterglobalist movement, the link between the political and the internal, organizational problems.

Therefore, it was decided that all IC members should be involved in this discussion and that the IC debate in Africa should be carefully prepared. A strategy seminar will take place one day before the start of the formal IC meeting. In order to try and identify the objectives, a discussion paper will be distributed on the mailing list with a call to give comments and contribute to the discussion. The final document should be distributed at least one month before the IC meeting.  The aim should not be to define ‘the’ WSF strategy but to identify the most important points of discussion.

The expansion working group has a similar problem as the resource committee which means that it has too few members.

The IC decided to accept the International film festival of Zanzibar and an oil workers union in the South of Iraq as new members.  The Social Forum on Migration and the Foro de Sao Paulo were accepted as observers. The discussion on the question of whether ‘permanent’ observers were possible will have to be held in Africa.

 The final point on the agenda was the place of the next IC. That it would be in Africa had already been decided. Taking into account the funding problems, Nigeria was proposed because there a major NGO would be able to help. The African Social Forum preferred another solution. No decision was made yet and within four weeks the African Social Forum will either make an alternative proposal or accept the Nigeria solution.

 The IC meeting ended with a brief discussion of the solidarity fund. Since there was a demand for help from the solidarity fund from a Northern organization, the IC decided to discuss this point in Africa.

 Conclusion

As has been noted at the start of these minutes, this IC meeting was very warm and it was made somewhat easier because of the limited attendance, and maybe also by the very bad acoustics in the meeting room.

It is clear however that the WSF is at a turning point. This IC mainly had technical discussions and the extremely limited political approach is way behind the political reality of Latin America. Consequently, it should not surprise us that many Latinamericans want a more politicized Forum that can have a real meaning for them. There clearly is a risk that the most political movements no longer will see what the added value of the Forum can be for them and will leave it all together.

Finally, this meeting also showed the urgency of a coherent attitude towards the principles of the Forum. In Nairobi, there was a lot of criticism concerning the ‘commodification’ and the ‘militarization’ of the Forum. In Belem, we lived in a beautiful and rather expensive hotel, we got small presents from the State of Para and we were driven around in buses of the ‘Policia militar’. Petrobras is financing. Here, the politicization is not referring to the political content of the debates but clearly to an alliance with the governmental parties. All this is not necessarily a problem, as long as we are coherent in what we accept and what we cannot accept and as long as we apply these rules in all the cities and countries where we meet.

 All in all, this IC may have been the decisive meeting that made clear that changes are possible and necessary. The coming months and the coming IC in Africa will be useful to decide on what directions the changes are going to take. How open the open space will be in the future? And how political will it be? There surely is no consensus yet on these points, but we all believe ‘another Forum is possible’.