|
The internationalization of the World Social Forum (WSF) will be redoubled in 2007, when the encounter is transferred to Africa. This decision, which was made yesterday, January 25, at a meeting of the International Council, ratifies the proposal presented by the African delegation in 2004.
Since 2002, when the second WSF was held, the Africans have been hoping to hold the event on their continent. First, however, it went to Asia and returned to Brazil, only then to be slated for the region where the negative reflections of globalization are the most apparent.
"We shall have to turn the World Social Forum into one of the major events of our history since independence," affirms the Tunisian Taoufik B. Abadalah, secretary of the African Social Forum.
"Through the Forum, we want to confront all the forces that are intervening on the continent. [Africa] is the large base for financial institutions to promote their policies.
"We could say that the continent has been recolonized in the last 20 years. And we want to change this situation." Africa is made up of thirty-three countries and divided into five sub-regions.
"This change is very important for Africa and for the World Social Forum. We face a big challenge in this path of expansion," argues Sérgio Haddad, of the Brazilian Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (Abong).
"Now we have to help them put together the Forum. They are the protagonists, and we are the back-up."
In 2006, prior to moving to Africa, the WSF will have a different format. Simultaneous and interlinked forums will take place on at least three different continents. The format for 2007 has yet to be defined.
Victor Nzuzi, of the GRAPR, a peasant organization from Congo, and member of the International Council representing the Southern Jubilee, informs that so far only Kenya has presented its candidacy to host the WSF.
"But this is still open. There are other countries on the continent that would like to receive the WSF," he says.
In any case, this will be the first time that the WSF will be supervised by entities organized on a continental scale.
In previous years, committees from Brazil and India staged the event, even though they counted directly on international assistance.
"Holding the World Social Forum in Africa will be a challenge for us. As it was for everyone. For the Indians, for the Brazilians. Everybody is learning, and now we shall have our chance," Taoufik reflects.
Translation: David Silberstein
Agência Brasil
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.