In the WSF IC meeting in Berlin (Germany), held at the end of last May,
it was decided that the first meeting of the IC to be held in 2008
would be in a African country and will be mainly dedicated to debating
“strategies”. This text is a support tool for a first facilitation of
this debate, which tries to organise a summary mapping of the issues
raised in the discussions carried out within the IC and the Strategies
commission. We are starting the debate and not yet in a moment of
synthesis. It is not intended to replace any of the texts and articles
that have already been circulating on this topic and others still to be
written. On the contrary, we believe that more IC members and members
of organisations that participate in the WSF should take-up this issue
and contribute to this debate.

The list of themes that we are proposing here, therefore, also has the
objective of promoting debate and we hope to receive comments and
contributions to enrich the discussion.

The WSF story was initiated with the launching of its proposal in 2000.
Its antecedents are linked to events carried out during the 1990s.
After all this time, it is obvious that much discussion has already
been carried out around many of the issues to be proposed here and it
is also true that the number of issues has increased recently. It is
these factors that have led the IC to organise this debate. From the
discussions which have already been circulated, we can recuperate, for
instance, the following questions and issues:

- Are we in another world context, different from the context
of 2000/2001, or in the same one? What elements of rupture and
continuity exist?

- What is our perception of United States supremacy in the
international scenario? Is this a unipolar world dominated by US
unilateralism or is this scenario also being occupied by other poles
(China, India, Russia)

- The different crisis that are now more evident on the agenda – like
global warming, financial crisis, crisis of democracies – have a new
dimension: now it is much more clear that there is a crisis of
civilization because its functioning based on productivity (very
stimulated by capitalism but also followed by socialism in the 20th
century) and liberal ideology is already affecting the life of the
planet in a global and irreversible way.

What are the repercussions of all of this in our debates and our actions?

- In the first WSF, in 2001, there was a strong focus on the criticisms
of the hegemonic /mainstream ideology constituted during the 1980s.

After 7 years, what is our assessment of this “battle of ideas”? Some
of the issues raised from the anti-globalisation movement were
appropriated by capitalist discourse and re-raised under new forms of
market at the service of that same capital (the classic example is the
proposal carbon credits to deal with the environmental issue). Is a
second generation of criticisms of the dominant thought / discourse
(which is not the same as it was 7 years ago) necessary?

- What happened to the anti-globalisation movement? Are there general tendencies? To some people, it seems that this movement is ina downward spiral.

What
are the links of these people with other actors from political life
(political parties, multilateral institutions, governments etc.)? Has
the anti-globalisation movement been able to constitute itself as a
relevant political actor in the different scenarios or has it not been
able to develop its intervention capacity in the political struggle?

It is widely recognised among us today the idea that the WSF must be a
process and an event, even if there is very little systematisation
about these concepts and their connections.

- The WSF has also emerged as a counterpoint to the Davos World
Economic Forum. This has been translated into the idea of holding the
WSF event during the same dates in such a way that this counterpoint
would be much more evident.

Is it essential to continue with this focus, of maintaining unified world events on those dates? This
contraposition has also been used as an argument to defend the
maintaining of the yearly periodicity of the centralized events: is it
necessary to maintain a centralized event each year or is it possible
to hold it every 2 or 3 years) as some actors suggest?

Some
comrades affirm that there is an unbalance between the effort required
to carry out the events and the energy left over to organise other
struggles.

How much was spent (in financial resources, hours of work
etc.) to mobilise towards WSF 2005 in Porto Alegre and how much for the
mobilisation against WTO in Hong Kong? Has the WSF - which should be a
tool for social movements - become an end in itself?

Questions

IMPORTANT

Under the nomination of “strategies” we propose to discuss the
following questions. If there are new questions to propose, please send
them to the list. The idea is that each question be answered in two
pages or jointly in up to six pages:

*Geopolitics: situation / world, regional and national context
“conjuncture”: today’s situation and what has been changed since the
beginning of WSF in 2000-1? Have we actually entered into a new phase
of neoliberalism? Have there been changes in the correlation of forces
at the international level? What are the main reasons for these changes?

*Organisations: that which is part of the scenario anterior to
the WSF, what is the situation of social movements, NGOs at world /
regional / national levels, what are the current different expressions
of “civil society” at world / regional / national levels and what has
changed since 2000-1?

*WSF: that which is part of the scenario anterior to the WSF, WSF evolution as an event and process, its fruits and dilemmas?

*Future: crossing the above issues, try to formulate political and organisational proposals for the continuity of the WSF.

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Some cobtributions from the IC members:

Article1: Do Space and Action have to be Contradictory? - Towards an inclusive WSF strategy By Vinod Raina see the link:
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_textos.php?cd_news=480

Article2: The World Council of Churches: Views about the future of WSF By Rogate Mshana read the article on :
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_textos.php?cd_news=494

Article 3: The WSF as "Moment" by Walden Bello read the article on:
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_textos.php?cd_news=500

Article4:Jubilee South Submission to the WSF International Council Strategy Debate by Jubilee South read the article on http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_textos.php?cd_news=499

Article 5: Strategic importance of fostering intercommunication using Internet by Jason Nardi and Pierre George read the article on
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_textos.php?cd_news=503

Article 6: Looking at the long march ahead of us. The wsf and our challenges by
Pierre Beaudet
(Alternatives International) read the article on: http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_textos.php?cd_news=513