At the IC [World Social Forum International Committee] meeting hold in Nairobi in January, I had a strong feeling of disconnection between what was discussed in that meeting – only procedural matters and logistics concerning the SF process itself – and the real world. This kind of bad feeling was shared by quite many other members of the IC : our world is in the middle of a Global War, led by the US, and this war will undoubtly degenerate, in the not so-long future, into new bloody conflicts, including a serious risk of nuclear war. Consistent with its mandate, the IC however was completely ignoring this war, as well as all the other burning issues of our planet, which, for sure, are at the heart of the preoccupations and activities of all the participants at that meeting.
In order to palliate to these self-imposed limitations, some of the participants in the SF process, established the Social Movements Assembly, which is a parallel structure without some of the political limitations of the SF, an action-oriented international coordination. Few other international assemblies have been established throughout the years, including the global Anti War Assembly.
The Social Movements Assembly, has a different mandate than the WSF one ; it can take practical decisions and organize campaigns, days of actions and mass initiatives. Moreover : in the SMA, the relative weight of the Social Movements , compared to the weight of the NGOs, is more important, and thus gives it great possibilities of mass mobilizations.
One of the highlights of the SMA and the AWA was the organization of the huge international demonstration against the invasion of Iraq in February 2003, in which 12-15 million demonstrators took part.
Last year, in Brussels, a three-days working session of social movements, initiated by some of the most active members of the SMA (CADTM, VIA CAMPESINA, CUT etc) discussed the place and the perspectives of the Social movements in the global process, and in May 2007 a second meeting of that kind is planned, in Berlin.
So far, so good.
However, the Nairobi SMA has shown its limits, which, mostly, are the result… of its success. A three hours meeting with a participation of two to three thousands activists can hardly be efficient, certainly for an action-oriented structure. Definitely, the political statement adopted by the SMA was good, as was, more or less, the one adopted by the Anti War Assembly, few hours before.
While the IC of the WSF cannot be changed, if we are interested to keep the Forum as an open and horizontal global structure, the SMA structure can and must be improved. My suggestions are going in three directions :
– continuity : the selection of a permanent steering committee, aimed at initiating urgent meetings on thematic or more general concerns, as well as urgent actions. In that sense we will not to have to wait until the next WSF to take our own initiatives as a global social movement ;
– efficiency : the Assembly should meet during the three or four days of the WSF, in order to be able to really tackle (some of) the important issues which are on our global agenda ;
– thematization : we must think about an internal division of part of the SMA assemblies according to thematic concerns/struggles (as indeed the Anti-War Assembly), allowing to have part of the discussions and some kind of synthesis before the plenary meetings.