World Social Forum 2006

The International Alliance of Inhabitants in Caracas is promoting two activities:

• a seminar: Zero Evictions Campaign: towards global unity of social urban movements
• a seminar: Toward the Urban Popular University

Furthermore the IAI, together with the FNRU (Fórum Nacional de Reforma Urbana, Brasil) and numerous networks and organisations, is promoting a seminar: Urban Reforms and the right to a city: actual challenges for democracy and social integration.
The objective is to deepen the debate on the theme of democracy and the right to a city, defining directions and strategy for campaigns against evictions and the right to water and defining circulation strategies for the World Charter for the Right to a City.

Among the promoters of the Assembly of the Southern Peoples, many burdened with historical, social and ecological debts, there are those who declare foreign debts illegitimate and would like to set up campaigns and strategies to end this pillage and see the restoration of what has been unjustly taken.

The workshop organized at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, Caracas, on the third day of the VI World Social Forum for the International Alliance of Inhabitants, has allowed the work developed over the last two years on the Urban Popular University to be opened up to a large, varied audience.

The International Alliance of Inhabitants (IAI) will be present in Bamako through the presence of the International Alliance of Inhabitants of Africa, who together with DAL (France) proposes a seminar entitled ‘Poverty and the right to housing’. Movements from Mali, Senegal, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and other African nations will participate in the seminar.

IAI will also participate at ‘Le Togun’ (a term in Dogon-Mali meaning ‘space for expression’). The instruments usually used in the WSF (murals with proposals, internet, …) would factually exclude African grass root organisations, for whom the predominant form of expression is an oral one using African languages. IAI will promote in this space, together with the oral proposals that will be made, a discussion on the problems linked with the right to a city and to housing.

“Another world is possible” cannot limit itself to theory: it is necessary to find means to help grass roots to overcome marginalisation. IAI has its own space and the Urban Popular University (UPU) that provides alternative means of training social leaders.

The Alliance of Independent Publishers, an IAI partner, announce the publication of the book “100 proposals from the World Social Forum”. This book enhances the proposals, which were discussed and posted on the Proposals Wall at the FSM 2005 at Porto Alegre. It was published simulteaously in Portuguese, Spanish, English and French through a network of 23 publishers.
The book was not only inspired by the varied and interesting proposals made by the participants during the last forum, but also by the “memoria viva” project (Social Forums’ Living Memory).
The book will be available at the Forums of Caracas, Bamako and at The Preparatory Assembly of the Magreby Social Forum at Bouznika in Morocco.

You could also download the book clicking here

During the first day, after the inauguration and the conference “The FAL in a new development phase: a network of resistance and alternatives for local authorities faced with neoliberal globalisation” (Yves Cabannes is amongst the rapporteurs), there will be the following work groups:

• Social Inclusion
• Peripheral cities (Cesare Ottolini is one of the rapporteurs)
• Human Rights in the City
• Decentralised Co-operation and Citizenship
• A culture of peace and reforms of International Institutions
• Participative Democracy: a challenge for “another world is possible”

The work of the work groups will be presented in Plenary session together with an analysis prepared by the Social Inclusion and Participative Democracy Commission of the UCLG on the Millennium Goals: the role of local authorities and communication with civil society.