by Mukundi Mutasa – SANF 07 No 4
Africa will host of the World Social Forum (WSF) in January 2007, with the theme “People’s Struggles, People’s Alternatives – Another World is Possible.”
An estimated 150,000 anti-globalisation activists will converge on Nairobi, Kenya from 20-25 January for a watershed conference during which they will discuss topical international issues.
The 7th edition of the WSF brings together activists, social movements, networks, coalitions and other interested groups from Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America and Europe.
Issues for discussion include the role of multilateral institutions in the international development agenda, impact of economic agreements and the struggle for land in Africa.
This will be the first time Africa will be the sole host of the WSF. Last year’s forum took place simultaneously in Mali and Venezuela in January, as well as in Pakistan in March.
Delegates to the Nairobi forum are expected to come up with positions on access to HIV and AIDS treatment; privatisation of common goods; the struggle for land in Africa; peace and conflict resolution; migration and the treatment of migrant labour; debt relief; and the impact of international economic agreements on the poor.
One of the issues to be discussed will be the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) currently being negotiated between the European Union (EU) and members of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) grouping.
EPAs are trade and development agreements that the EU is presently negotiating with the six ACP regions – the Caribbean, Central Africa, Eastern and Southern Africa, Pacific, Southern Africa (the Southern African Development Community group) and West Africa.
These agreements will replace the trade chapters of the Cotonou Agreement reached in 2000 between the EU and the ACP countries. They Cotonou Agreement provided one-way trade preferences in favour of ACP countries while the proposed arrangement demands reciprocal trade arrangements.
By insisting on reciprocity in EU-ACP trade, the EPA agreements will effectively remove the protection that poor countries used to enjoy under the Cotonou Agreement.
They will open up ACP markets to strong competition from European manufacturers.
Over 100 countries will be represented at the forum and former Zambian President, Kenneth Kaunda, is among the many dignitaries from southern Africa expected to participate.
Others are the former Organisation of African Unity secretary-general, Salim Ahmed Salim, and South African ant-apartheid icon, Winnie Mandela. The former South African President, Nelson Mandela, will deliver a pre-recorded speech.
The World Social Forum had, in September 2006, come up with nine “terrains” around which the organisation’s campaigns, actions and struggles are governed.
Forum organisers hope that the outcome of the Nairobi meeting will assist in building a peaceful and just world, free from domination by multinational and financial capital and where there is universal and sustainable access to the common goods such as water.
From its modest origins in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001, the WSF has grown into a global counterforce challenging the assumptions and dictates of imperialism and its associated neo-liberal policies that have over the decades devastated Southern economies.
It is the South’s version of the World Economic Forum, which brings together businesspersons and political leadership, primarily from the North, each year in Davos, Switzerland.
