Teivo Teivainen
The International Council (IC) of the World Social Forum (WSF) decided today, 8 May 2009,
in Rabat that the next WSF shall be organized in Dakar in 2011. The Senegalese capital
was presented as a consensual proposal of the Council of the African Social Forum, after
months of intense deliberation.
Various kinds of doubts had been expressed in previous IC meetings about the conditions
for organizing a WSF in Africa in 2011. Nevertheless, the decision was made in Rabat
without opposition or contestation. This does not mean that doubts would have ceased to
exist, but in my opinion it speaks well of the WSF learning process that a consensual
decision was constructed on this issue that had caused sometimes heated debates in
previous IC meetings.
Even if there has never been a formal decision to always keep holding the main WSF events
every two years, in practice this is the rhythm the forum process has had for some years
now. After the Porto Alegre WSF in 2005, which was the fifth consecutive WSF global event
organized annually, there was a polycentric (decentralized) experiment in 2006, held in
Caracas, Bamako and Karachi. After the centralized WSF in Nairobi in 2007, so-called
Global Days of Action were organized in 2008. After the Belem WSF held in January 2009,
there has been some uncertainty about where the main WSF event would be organized next.
Now one part of this uncertainty is over.
As the decisions of the WSF International Council tend to take quite some time to
circulate, I decided to make some brief initial reflections on the decision. These are
based on my involvement in the IC since its inception in 2001 as well as conversations
and interviews with some key people during this IC meeting held in Morocco. Together with
Giuseppe Caruso, I participated in this IC meeting as representative of the Network
Institute for Global Democratization (www.nigd.org) and I thank Giuseppe for comments on
this hastily written report.
Learning from Nairobi
As some of the critical questions about organizing the WSF event in Africa have had to do
with the experience of the previous global WSF event held in the continent, I talked
today to Edward Oyugi, who was one the key organizers of the Nairobi WSF in 2007.
Edward seemed optimistic about the Dakar WSF, because it will benefit from the experience
of various previous WSF events in Africa, including the Nairobi WSF in 2007, the
polycentric WSF held in Bamako in 2006 and various events of the African Social Forum
process, most recently in Niger in 2008. There are also plans to hold a thematic social
forum event in Niger in 2010, as part of the preparations for the Dakar WSF. Therefore
“back to Africa” does not only mean back after Nairobi but a continuation of a process
that has taken place in and around Africa during many years.
Differences with the Nairobi WSF preparations mentioned by Edward included a stronger
focus in the world and in Africa on the crisis of global capitalism. In particular, he
thought that the Economic Partner Agreements (EPAs) between the European Union and
various African countries will be one of the key points of concern for the organizations
participating in the Dakar WSF. Edward also referred to the differences between Kenya and
Senegal in state-society relationship, something I will explore below.
One more novelty will probably be the increasingly strong focus on the environmental and
climatic questions. Various Nomadic groups that are particularly vulnerable to
environmental crises were already present in Nairobi, but Edward deemed probable that
they would play a much stronger role in setting the agenda for Dakar.
I also believe the Belem WSF where there was much focus on the importance of learning
from the indigenous ways of living to confront the environmental crisis, has strengthened
the capacity of the WSF process to take into account groups that have been previously
excluded from the agenda-setting of the process. This capacity was already significantly
strengthened by the presence of dalit groups in the WSF 2004 organized in Mumbai.
The Dakar Decision
Making the decision to hold WSF 2011 in Dakar took relatively long time, after the IC
initially decided in May 2007 that the 2011 event should take place somewhere in Africa.
The initial decision was taken simultaneously with the decision to organize the 2009
event in Belem. As there had been some proposals to organize already the 2009 event in
Africa, deciding on Africa 2011 was one element in building consensus around Belem 2009.
In the following IC meetings, there were ambiguous and tense moments when African
participants demanded a stronger commitment of the IC as a whole to organizing the WSF in
Africa in 2011. Doubts about the conditions to organize the WSF in Africa were expressed
more often in the corridors and informal beer sessions than in the plenary debates of the
IC. (Though for some expressions of this debate in the plenary sessions, see my report
from the Abuja IC meeting at
http://www.nigd.org/nan/nan-doc-store/03-04-2008/wsf-ic-abuja-teivo-teivainen-2008).
In the Belem IC meeting, organized in February 2009, it became more or less clear how
complicated and embarrassing for the IC it would be to decide to organize WSF 2011
anywhere outside Africa. There was some speculation on the possibility to organize it in
the United States, but it soon became obvious that this was neither realistic nor really
proposed by the organizers of the US Social Forum. It was therefore decided in Belem, and
this time with more commitment than before, that the African Social Forum organizers
would work toward a unified proposal and this would be decided in Rabat.
As recounted by Taoufik Ben Bella today, within the African process there were initially
four main possible host countries for the African WSF: Senegal, Niger, South Africa and
Tanzania. By March 2009, there were only two countries were able to present a proper
application, after the South Africans had decided not to continue with the possible
candidacy. Thereafter, with a deliberation process that Taoufik called “quite
democratic”, Senegal became the consensual proposal. Perhaps as part of the negotiation,
the Africans decided to hold a thematic social forum in Niger in 2010 as part of the
preparatory process toward Dakar.
In Rabat, the tone of the applauses after Taoufik and Demba Moussa Dembele initially
presented the proposal to hold WSF 2011 in Dakar already indicated that there would be
little resistance to the proposal. The interventions that followed expressed the shared
enthusiasm toward the proposal, which at the end of the day was accepted unanimously.
Within the State, Without the State
One of the doubts about the conditions for the WSF process in various parts of Africa,
and obviously also elsewhere in the world, is related to the relationship of the
movements and the state. Even if the WSF is formally a “civil society” process, the
social movements and NGOs exists in contexts of significant state presence.
In his initial presentation to the IC plenary, as “representative of the Senegalese
social movements”, Demba stated that “all” Senegalese social movements are behind the
application to hold the WSF there. Even if it would be naïve (if not scary) to assume
that such an absolute consensus could ever be formed, I have not hear of any major social
movements in Senegal that would be vocally opposed to the WSF events. As compared to many
other countries of the region, it seems that Senegal does have relatively important
social movements, but my possibilities to assess the level of their adherence to the WSF
process are limited.
In any case, the relationship of the movements with the state is likely to be different
in Dakar than it was in Nairobi. I also asked Edward Oyugi about this. Here again, he was
optimistic.
In Kenya, according to Edward, organizing the WSF was tolerated by the state mostly
because of the perceived financial benefits it would bring. Ideologically, there was a
relatively strong “state-civil society cleavage”, as the Kenyan state had little
understanding toward radical or left-leaning social organizations. Edward compared this
to Senegal, where the state would be less hostile toward left-oriented organizations and
more prone to appreciate radical proposals. He even referred to the legacy of Leopold
Senghor, ex president of Senegal, as an indication of this openness.
Of course, I need to add, this may also imply the risk that the relationship of the WSF
organizers with the state may become too close, which is one of the doubts that have been
expressed about the possibility of organizing the WSF in places like Dakar. Close
relationship with the state has its pros and cons, and much depends on the capacity of
the social movements to act autonomously in different contexts, whether with more or with
less hostile government. As such, and with various contextual differences, this question
has also been present in other places where the WSF has been organized with at least some
support from the local state, including Brazil and Venezuela.
According to Demba, the state authorities want the WSF to be held there because they
consider it an “honor to the democratic nature of Senegal”. According to him, the
government is aware that the movements need to be able to express themselves “quite
freely”. I do not have enough understanding of the situation to speculate on
When talking about the government, it is useful to distinguish between local authorities
and the national (or federal) state. Demba pointed out that the municipal government of
Dakar has a particularly good relationship with the movements. “The mayor is one of us”,
he said, adding that the mayor has worked on themes like the foreign debt and Economic
Partnership Agreements. Also Rabia Abdelkrim, who expressed some fears that the
Senegalese state might want to control the WSF process, found the mayor and the municipal
government a more suitable partner.
One of the ways through which the organizing process might increase its autonomy
vis-à-vis the Senegalese government is the creation of a South-based transnational
organizing committee for the Dakar WSF. This initiative, announced by Taoufik, was also
commented approvingly by Virginia Vargas, who in general tends to be critical of the
attempts of assumedly progressive states to control the WSF. It remains to be seen how
this and other new proposals will function in practice, but today it does seem that the
process is advancing through learning.
Money, Culture and Power
One of the main challenges for most forums has been financial. The question of how the
Dakar WSF will be financed was not discussed much in the plenary sessions of the Rabat
IC. It seems that the Finance Commission of the IC did not have possibilities to meet
properly in Rabat either because people were busy in other commissions and activities.
Even if there exists a proposal to rely on significant South-South networks in the
organizing process toward Dakar, the North-South dimension is likely to play a role in
the finance question. Compared to the forums organized in Brazil or Venezuela, the WSF
2011 will be organized in a country with significantly less available resources even
assuming the political will for state financing would exist.
During the first years of the WSF process, questions of finance were often seen as simply
technical issues. In recent years, more attentions has been paid to the political
dimension of finance, the links between money and power, and hopefully even more so in
the preparations for this next forum in Africa.
As was pointed by some participants of the Rabat IC, we should not rely on overly
dichotomous conceptions of the North-South cleavages. One of the big challenges in this
context is the civilizational one. Senegal is the first overwhelmingly Islamic country,
in terms of the religious affiliation of the majority, in which a global WSF event is
held.
In the assessments of the Nairobi WSF, much attention was paid to the presence of
fundamentalist or reactionary church-based organizations that had positions that many
feminist organizations found in outrageous violation of the WSF Charter of Principles.
Some, such as Virginia Vargas, have expressed concern about the possibility that such
Islamist organizations that might have similarly intolerant attitudes toward, for
instance, reproductive rights could have presence in the Dakar WSF. Its seems the best
way to deal with these dilemmas is to try to follow the Charter of Principles in defining
what kind of organizations are supposed to participate in the WSF process.
Islam, however, is an example of a theme in which the Forum process should not assume
simplistic dichotomies. As the existence of a growing number of European Muslims, it is
by no means a purely North-South issue. The Dakar WSF could present an opportunity for
the forum process to tackle complicated politico-cultural questions related to
coloniality and Eurocentrism, for example as regards Islam.
All in all, the feelings in the Rabat IC about the challenges of organizing the WSF 2011
in Dakar were enthusiastic. In this hastily written instant report I have only touched
some of the issues at play. Now it is time to start the hard work.