World Social Forum comes to Nairobi

By Otieno Amisi

The Kenya Debt Relief Network (KENDREN) recently held a national forum on the World Bank and the international monetary fund.According to Soren Ambrose of Solidarity Africa, the two global financial institutions are responsible for World the devastation of the lives of millions of people in developing countries.Soren says Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPS), Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF), and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers forced on poor countries by the institutions have undermined the ability of governments to make meaningful social investments and degraded sovereignty.

“At their worst, the international financial institutions have undermined the very notion of state sovereignty and proven to be anti people. In September, the IMF and the World Bank held their Annual Meeting in Singapore, and civil,society groups like Kendren led vigorous campaigns on debt, economic and social justice.“We must resist the international agenda of neoliberal policies and the attendant economic domination that continues to cripple the progress of whole societies, especially in the global south,” says Soren
Kenya has been on the receiving end of such policies in both content and process. We must now join other countries of the South in both auditing and saying no to the continued domination of the World Bank and the IMF.

Kenya has severally declared its commitment to uplifting the living standards of its people, but is afraid rebut the advances of the two institutions.

The World Social Forum (WSF), whch holds its meeting early next year, is an annual meeting held by members of the anti-globalization movement to coordinate world campaigns, share and refine organizing strategies, and inform each other about movements from around the world and their issues. It tends to meet in January when its great capitalist rival, the World Economic Forum is meeting in Davos, Switzerland.The WSF has prompted the organising of many regional social forums, including the European Social Forum, the Asian Social Forum, the Mediterranean Social Forum, and many local and national social forum, such as the Italian Social Forum, Liverpool Social Forum and the Boston Social Forum. The first-ever US Social Forum will take place in Atlanta in June of 2007. In 2006, the WSF was held in different cities around the world, including Caracas, Venezuela and Bamako, Mali (both in January); and Karachi, Pakistan (March). In 2007 it will be held in Nairobi, Kenya.

The WSF has been criticised, particularly by socialist and communist left parties, for producing few practical ideas, concentrating instead on general and vague criticisms of neoliberalism and imperialism. On the other hand some, particularly anarchists, have criticised the WSF for attempting to act as a central decision making location for dissident groups, as the Communist Internationals once did. Most WSF participants would counter that the WSF is not a decision-making body, but rather a space for public deliberation.

A far more prevalent criticsm runs in the opposite direction: that the group has no established procedure for adopting consensus statements or advocacies.The WSF is also subject to the same criticisms as the anti/alternative globalization movements, namely that the globalization and capitalism they oppose are inevitable, or that globalisation and capitalism are the most effective means of addressing global poverty. WSF participants have responded that the idea of the ‘inevitability’ of globalisation is simply an ideological myth, hence their embrace of the slogan, ‘Another World is Possible’.

Right-wing opponents of the current global order have criticised the supposed pluralism of the WSF, as it only includes movements on the left (from social democrats to anarchists).Some activities by activists attending the WSF have also been criticised, such as in the WSF 2001, where activists invaded and destroyed a plantation of experimental transgenics of the Monsanto enterprise.