|
At the 6th World Social Forum's Latin American session, to start next week in Caracas, Venezuela, the objective of the Brazilian government will be to expand the debate on environment protection, land reform and combating hunger and misery.
According to Luiz Dulci, the secretary general of the Presidency, those issues are Brasília's priorities. 'We are going to participate in a spirit of contributing to the social movement and try to learn from the other participants," said Dulci. He called the decision to split the forum into three separate sessions on three different continents an attempt to make it more participatory and democratic. The 6th WSF began in Bamako, Mali, in January 19 and will go until January 23; it then moves to Caracas, Venezuela, from January 24 to 29; the third and final session will take place in Karachi, Pakistan, in March. Brazil will send representatives to all the sessions. In Mali, the head of the Special Secretariat for Racial Equality, Matilde Ribeiro, is participating. In Venezuela, the representation will be greater: President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will be present (he has attended four of the past five forums), along with the ministers of Environment, Marina Silva, and Agrarian Development, Miguel Rossetto. According to the secretary general of the Presidency, Luiz Dulci, Brazil's position with regard to the Caracas meeting is that it is an important step in the integration of South America in that the forum goes beyond international commerce and will bring together civil society organizations. Dulci said that without integrating civil society there can be no solid integration. "It is important to strengthen commerce and infrastructure, but we also need a unification of worker unions, environmental activists and Indian movements," he pointed, The Brazilian official then added that much progress has been made over the last three years in the area of economic integration, but that from a social point of view a lot remains to be done. Water Excluded The 6th World Social Forum is expected to mark the emergence of a new cause. In its American edition, which begins next week in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, the Forum will be the launching pad of a campaign to prevent the privatization of water supplies. "We plan to initiate a continental mobilization to remove water from all trade agreements," says Pablo Sólon, director of the Sólon Foundation, a civil society organization responsible for the mobilization that produced the law reversing the privatization of petroleum and gas in Bolivia. According to the Bolivian activist, various Latin American movements have decided to oppose the inclusion of water-related clauses in Free Trade Agreements like the one signed between Chile and the United States. "We also want water supplies to be eliminated from the negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO)," Sólon remarked. Sólon argues that, by determining that countries cannot impose barriers against private investments in the sector, these agreements attempt to turn water into a product like any other. In his view, this commercial logic runs counter to the idea that water is a universal right to be guaranteed by the State. The Forum represents the chief gathering of civil society to discuss the struggle for the democratization of politics and the economy. The 6th World Society Forum introduces an innovation in that it will take place on three different continents. In the previous versions, the Forum was held four times in Porto Alegre (2001, 2002, 2003, and 2005) and once in Mumbai (2004), the Indian city once known as Bombay. The Forum in Caracas will run from January 24 to 29. The African version, in Bamako, capital of Mali, is taking place several days earlier. The Asian version will be held in Karachi, capital of Pakistan a few months later. 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.
Brazil should go to Brazil Social Forums.
Clean your dirty country first. Improve life to your 50 millions of poors, before wishing to give lessons to World Forums.
The world should not copy what you have done and what you do.
You are champion of weath inequality, NON social inclusion, impunity, crimes, insecurity, corruption, lack of education.
How can a country like Brazil, self proclaiming itself, loudly, to be the garden of the world, exporting so much agriculture, AND have hunger and millions and millions of under nourrisehd citizens ??????
Unfairness is the religion of Brazil !.