A Political Programme
for the World Social Forum ?
Democracy, Substance and Debate
in the Bamako Appeal and the Global Justice Movements
A Reader
Jai Sen and Madhuresh Kumar
with
Patrick Bond and Peter Waterman
January 2007
CACIM
Published by :
CACIM - India Institute for Critical Action : Centre in Movement
A-3 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110 024, India
[email protected], www.cacim.net
Ph : +91-11-4155 1521, 2433 2451
CCS - Centre for Civil Society
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Memorial Tower Building, Howard College
Durban, 4041 South Africa
www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs
Ph : +27 31 260 3195
Cover Photo Credit :
This work is copyrighted under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 cluase. The copyright
holder is Natecull (http://www.flickr.com/photos/natecull/)
Note :
The Reader is intended for limited and private circulation, for non-profit educational and discussion
purposes only. It is useful to also clarify that the views of the authors in the various articles included here
are not necessarily the views of the compilers, and equally that inclusion in this collection does not
necessarily imply that the authors agree with the views expressed by the compilers of the Reader.
Acknowledgements
This Reader on the Bamako Appeal and the Global Justice Movements has been prepared for the meeting
‘Revisiting the Bamako Appeal : Issues of Democracy and Substance in the World Movement’ being
organised by CACIM (India Institute for Critical Action : Centre in Movement), New Delhi, India, and
CCS (University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society), Durban, South Africa, at the World Social
Forum 2007 in Nairobi, Kenya, on January 21 2007. It has been compiled by CACIM and CCS, and with
input and advice from Peter Waterman of The Hague, The Netherlands. We would like to acknowledge
the help of Sah Bittu, Geoffrey Pleyers, Nishant and many others who have helped us put together this
Reader in a very short time. We also thank our printers for this excellent job, again in record time !
For reasons of space (and time), we have included here only the relatively shorter essays among all those
that are available on global justice and solidarity movements (GJSM) but on the other hand, we have tried
to collect together everything that is currently available on the Bamako Appeal in order to contribute to
the debate – aside from some of the key documents in history that we think are relevant in order to
understand the Bamako Appeal in perspective. Many of the documents featured here have been drawn
from OpenSpaceForum (www.openspaceforum.net), and in time all of them will be up there. We hope
that this collection will be useful for the meeting in Nairobi and might also, over time, become a
significant reference source for the strategies and manifestos being constantly generated worldwide by
constituents of the GJSM.
Please note that we have not in any way edited the documents that we have sourced and reproduced here
other than in some cases adding the publication date. In all such cases we have acknowledged the sources
for the documents, to our best of ability. Some of the texts however have been especially written for this
collection, and we would like to express our gratitude to their authors for doing so in this time.
The Reader is intended for limited and private circulation, for non-profit educational and discussion
purposes only. It is useful to also clarify that the views of the authors in the various articles included here
are not necessarily the views of the compilers, and equally that inclusion in this collection does not
necessarily imply that the authors agree with the views expressed by the compilers of the Reader.
Jai Sen and Madhuresh Kumar, with Patrick Bond and Peter Waterman
New Delhi, Kathmandu, Durban, and The Hague
January 2007
Printed at : Capital Printers, Mangolpur Khurd, New Delhi, India
CACIM and CCS @ WSF Nairobi
Revisiting the Bamako Appeal :
Issues of Democracy and Substance
in the Global Justice Movements
January 21 2007
Following the announcement of the ‘Porto Alegre Manifesto’ at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in January
2005, signed by 19 eminent intellectuals, the period of the polycentric Forum in January 2006 saw the enunciation
of a major new document, the ‘Bamako Appeal’. With the initiative led by Samir Amin (economist and Director,
Third World Forum, located in Dakar, Senegal, and Chair, World Forum for Alternatives, Cairo, Egypt, and
Louvain, Belgium) and François Houtart (sociologist and President, World Forum for Alternatives, Louvain,
Belgium), the Bamako Appeal is a major document that calls for a redoubling of resistance to imperialism and
proposes measures and a programme by which this might be done.
Many have questioned the somewhat closed and opaque manner by which the Appeal was drafted and
announced however, which raised issues of internal democracy within the world movement and the question of
whose voices are heard. As a result, the process as well as the content of the Bamako Appeal have come to be
widely commented on and criticised.
For an archive of articles on the Appeal as well as initiatives taken by CACIM (New Delhi) and the Centre for
Civil Society (Durban) towards promoting public debate, see http://www.openspaceforum.net/twiki/tikiindex.php?page=Bamakoappeal, and http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs
We at CACIM and CCS believe that the Bamako Appeal is an important document. Aside from the inspiration
that the organisers themselves drew from the Bandung Conference, others have compared it to the Communist
Manifesto. Both the document and the process by which it emerged demand our close and critical attention. And this
also needs to happen in public, and within a larger historical and political perspective.
With the world scenario having substantially changed in recent years, the World Social Forum at Nairobi offers a
significant opportunity to debate the Bamako Appeal and ask the larger question of whether the WSF is ready for a
political programme. Some of us believe it is not, while others argue that a programme is overdue, but that it should
arise from activists and movements committed to generalising their existing struggles.
Join us at this important meeting ! It promises to be a strong debate. We will have with us the authors of the
Bamako Appeal, some of its signatories, some of its critics, and also some independent commentators. It will be a
strongly participative WORKSHOP, organised in a bottom-up manner with maximum time for floor debate.
Confirmed speakers: Chico Whitaker (Brazil), Dorothea Haerlin (Germany), Francine Mestrum (Belgium),
François Houtart (Belgium), Geoffrey Pleyers (Belgium), Immanuel Wallerstein (USA), Jai Sen (India), Lee Cormie
(Canada), Linus Jayathilake (MONLAR, Sri Lanka), Peter Custers (The Netherlands), Peter Waterman (UK / The
Netherlands), Prishani Naidoo (South Africa), Teivo Teivainen (Finland / Peru), Tony Tujan Jr (The Philippines),
Trevor Ngwane (South Africa), Vittorio Agnoletto (Italy – probable)
For a wide collection of articles on and around the issue of open space, check out the OpenSpaceForum @
www.openspaceforum.net
And : Subscribe to WSFDiscuss, an open and unmoderated forum on the World Social Forum and on related social
and political movements and issues. Simply send an empty email to [email protected]
CACIM and CCS @ WSF Nairobi
In Defence of Open Space
January 23 2007
One of the defining features of the World Social Forum is that it is struggling to be an ‘open space’ – a space for
relatively free association and for the free and creative exchange of ideas and experiences. This, and the attempt to
sustain this openness, is a very special culture of politics. In our understanding, this effort is especially important
given the current juncture in world history, post 9/11, where – under the regime of exceptionalism – a wide range of
steps have been taken and are being taken, both in the North and the South, to curb and to suspend civil liberties and
to radically invade privacy, community, and culture, in particular through the articulation of a ‘homeland security
state’, with all its ramifications; and worse, since these steps have been widely internalised in and by civil societies
across the world. At this level, the WSF and its self-defined concept of ‘open space’ is a significant and radical
polemical challenge to empire and to hegemonic politics. It is also of no small historical interest that this world-scale
‘open space’ was initiated in the very same year as 9/11 and the war on and of terror – and the beginning of the
contemporary closing of spaces.
At another level however, there have been several calls arising within the World Social Forum itself over the
past several years to ‘reform’ the Forum – but the common implication of all these calls (the Call of Social
Movements, the Group of 19 Statement, the Bamako Appeal) seems likely to also transform the Forum from a
relatively open space into a more unified and delineated movement – thus threatening to delimit, if not actually
close, the open space that it so far has been, but of course under a completely different logic than the threat from the
discourse of a ‘homeland security state’.
In addition, we believe that it is necessary to be sanguine and ask the question : Although coming from very
different directions, can these two dynamics also intertwine, at this juncture of world politics, as has happened at
earlier points in history ?
Following earlier meetings that it has called or has been associated with (at the Asia Social Forum, Hyderabad,
January 2003; the World Social Forum in Mumbai, January 2004; the WSF in Porto Alegre in January 2005; the
Workshop on the WSF at CCS in July 2006), CACIM (India Institute for Critical Action : Centre in Movement),
New Delhi, India, in association with CCS (Centre for Civil Society), Durban, South Africa, are now convening a
major seminar at the Nairobi Forum on January 23 2006, on the proposition ‘In Defence of Open Space’.
Using the WSF as an important instance of the struggle for open space (but not being limited to it alone),
this will be an experimental, exploratory, and strongly participatory workshop, to explore and share
understandings of cultures of politics and of the concept of ‘open space’. We want to look at several key conceptual
and political questions : Why an open space ? What does the concept and materiality of an open space do, and mean,
for notions of ‘social movement’ and our struggles ? And for ‘organisation’ and ‘democracy’ more generally ? What
is the relationship between open space and autonomous space, and between open space and horizontality ? How
does the model of open space (or de-centred networking logics more broadly) help us build networks of other worlds
? Does open space represent a model for ‘reinventing the political’ ?
We want to make the encounter itself an open space. We hope to engage critically with the actions, thoughts and
beliefs of all those present, in the belief that we all sometimes need different lenses – other perspectives – to
challenge and transform our own views.
Towards the proposed exploration of open space, it could be especially fruitful to focus discussion and analysis
the following four broad areas :
x Interrogating the WSF’s self-defined culture of politics : The concept of ‘open space’
x Exploring the relationship between Open Space and marginality in the WSF and in our movements
x Thinking through the possibilities for open space in world politics; and x The Future of Our Struggles : Networking Open Space.
Confirmed speakers : Antonio Martins (Brazil), Bernard Cassen (France), Boaventura de Sousa Santos
(Portugal), Chico Whitaker (Brazil), David Karlsson (Sweden), Demba Moussa Dembele (Senegal - possible),
Dorothea Haerlin (Germany), Jai Sen (India), Janet Conway (Canada), Lee Cormie (Canada), Marco Berlinguer
(Italy), Molefi Ndlovu (South Africa), Teivo Teivainen (Finland / Peru)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Contributors to the Reader
Section
1
Introductions
1.1 The Bamako Appeal Dialogue : An Introduction : Peter Waterman
1.2 Fragments of an Introduction : A Background to this Reader : Jai Sen, CACIM (New Delhi)
1.3 A Political Programme for the WSF ? : Patrick Bond, CCS (Centre for Civil Society, Durban)
Section
2
The Communist Manifesto
2.1 Communist Manifesto : Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1848
Section
3
Bandung
3.1 Final Communiqué of the Asian-African Conference : Asian-African Conference, April 24 1955
3.2 Outcomes of the Asian-African Summit : Asian-African Summit, April 1955
3.3 Speech to Bandung Conference Political Committee, 1955 : Jawaharlal Nehru, nd [1955]
Section
4
The World Social Forum
4.1 World Social Forum Charter of Principles : World Social Forum Organising Committee and World
Social Forum International Council, June 2001
4.2 Today’s Bandung : Michael Hardt, March-April 2002
Section
5
Call of Social Movements
5.1 Porto Alegre II – Call of Social Movements – Resistance to neoliberalism and militarism : for
peace and social justice : Anon, nd, c.January 2002
5.2 World Call of the Social Movements, Porto Alegre, Brazil - January 27th 2003 : ALAI - Agencia
Latinoamericana de Informacion (Ecuador), Amigos de la Tierra (El Salvador), Arab NGO
Network for Development (Lebanon), and others, January 2003
5.3 Seminar of the Social Movements, Brussels, September 28 - October 1 2006, Summary Report :
Christophe Aguiton (European March Against Unemployment), Ruli Agus (Federation
Indonesian Peasant Union (FSPI), member Via Campesina), Akimoto Yoko (ATTAC Japan), and
ors, October 2006
Section
6
Porto Alegre Manifesto
6.1 Porto Alegre Manifesto : Group of Nineteen, February 20 2005
6.2 Discussing the Porto Alegre Manifesto : Patrick Bond, February 22 2005
Section
7
The Bamako Appeal
7.1 The Bamako Appeal : Forum pour un Autre Mali, Forum Mondial des Alternatives (France), Forum
du Tiers Monde (Sénégal), ENDA (Sénégal) and ors, February 2006
7.2 Signatories to The Bamako Appeal : François Houtart, WFA (World Forum for Alternatives), April
2006
7.3 Answers to Bamako Appeal : François Houtart, April 13 2006
7.4 Bamako Appeal promotes struggle against market-driven society, Bamako, Mali : John
Catalinotto, January 27 2006
7.5 World Social Forum puts Africa up front / Round tables issue Bamako Appeal / Appel de
Bamako : John Catalinotto, February 2006
7.6 The World Social Forum lands in Africa : Geoffrey Pleyers, September 2006
Section
8
Reactions to the Bamako Appeal
8.1 The Bamako Appeal and The Zapatista 6th Declaration : Between Creating New Worlds and
Reorganizing the Existing One : Kolya Abramsky, May 2006
8.2 Some Comments on the Bamako Appeal : Michael Albert, May 4 2006
8.3 Does Bamako Appeal ? The World Social Forum Versus the Life Strategies of the Subaltern :
Franco Barchiesi, Heinrich Bohmke, Prishani Naidoo, and Ahmed Veriava, July 22-23 2006
8.4 Politics of the WSF: A debate in Durban, Centre for Civil Society Workshop on the World Social
Forum, July 2006
8.5 Appraising the Bamako Appeal : A Contribution to the Debate : Peter Custers, June 15 2006
8.6 Some Questions Directed to the Authors of the Bamako Appeal : Dorothea Haerlin, April 28 2006
8.7 Comments on Bamako Appeal : Peter Marcuse, May 6 2006
8.8 A Critique of the Bamako Appeal : Steve Martinot, 2006
8.9 Letter to Organisers of Bamako Meeting : Antonio Martins, Chico Whitaker, and Sergio Haddad,
March 16 2006
8.10 Some Comments on The Bamako Appeal : Francine Mestrum, February 20 2006
8.11 The World Social Forum and the Bamako Appeal : Yes, but no … : Francine Mestrum, June 10
2006
8.12 From the ‘Conference of the Peoples of Bandung’ to the Bamako Appeal : Geoffrey Pleyers,
January 2007
8.13 Comments on the Bamako Appeal : Subir Sinha, April 25 2006
8.14 Bamako Appeal Spikes Controversy : Ruby van der Wekken, Peter Waterman, Francine Mestrum,
Teivo Teivainen, Ruby van der Wekken, Ruth Reitan, Tord Bjork, Marko Ulvila, February 2006
8.15 The Bamako Appeal : A Post-Modern Janus ? : Peter Waterman, April 15 2006
8.16 Beyond Bamako : The Bamako Appeal and the Maturation of the World Social Forum : Peter
Waterman, May-June 2006
Section
9
Beyond Bamako : Many Worlds, Many Languages
9.1 Democratic Politics Globally : Elements for a Dialogue on Global Political Party Formations :
Samir Amin, 2006
9.2 Beyond the Third World : Imperial Globality, Global Coloniality and Anti-Globalisation Social
Movements : Arturo Escobar, February 2004
9.3 The International Union Merger of November 2006 : Top-Down, Eurocentric, and… Invisible ?
: Peter Waterman, Autumn 2006
9.4 Women’s Global Charter for Humanity : World March of Women, December 10 2004
9.5 Invitation-Summons to the Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against
Neoliberalism : Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN - Ejército Zapatista de Liberación
Nacional), May 1996
9.6 6th Declaration of the Selva Lacandona : Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN - Ejército
Zapatista de Liberación Nacional), July 1 2005
*
CACIM - India Institute for Critical Action : Centre in Movement
A-3 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110 024, India
[email protected], www.cacim.net
Ph : +91-11-4155 1521, 2433 2451
CCS - Centre for Civil Society
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Memorial Tower Building, Howard College
Durban, 4041 South Africa
www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs
Ph : +27 31 260 3195
Contributors to the Reader
Kolya Abramsky edited the book Restructuring and Resistance, Diverse Voices of Struggle in Western
Europe, and is involved in anti-authoritarian global anti-capitalist networking processes, at the global,
European, and local levels, with a current focus on renewable energy.
Christophe Aguiton is a leader of the French Association to Tax financial Transactions to Aid Citizens
(ATTAC) and the European March Against Unemployment.
Ruli Agus is a leading member of the Federation of Indonesian Peasant Unions and the global network
Via Campesina.
Akimoto Yoko is a member of ATTAC-Japan and of the Asian Pacific Workers Solidarity Links editorial
committee.
Michael Albert coordinates the www.zmag.org network and is the author of many books on participatory
economics and the progressive movements, including Realizing Hope, Parecon, Remembering
Tomorrow and Moving Forward.
Samir Amin directs the Third World Forum in Dakar, chairs the World Forum for Alternatives, and has
authored numerous books on global capitalism, including, most recently, Beyond US Hegemony :
Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World and Memoirs of an Independent Marxist.
Franco Barchiesi, an Italian, holds a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and
teaches in African Studies at Ohio State University in the United States.
Tord Bjork is cofounder of the Popular Movements Study Group and is a member of Friends of the
Earth Sweden, Network Institute on Global Democracy and Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
Heinrich Bohmke is a filmmaker and legal activist based at the Centre for Civil Society in Durban.
Patrick Bond directs the Centre for Civil Society in Durban, and has authored, most recently, Looting
Africa and Talk Left Walk Right.
John Catalinotto is a journalist and lecturer at City University of New York, who has represented the
International Action Center at tribunals in the U.S. and in Vienna and Belgrade.
Peter Custers is the author of Capital Accumulation and Women's Labour in Asian Economies and
Questioning Globalized Militarism.
Arturo Escobar is based at the University of North Carolina in the United States where he is Kenan
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies, and
author of the influential book Encountering Development.
The Group of Nineteen who authored the Porto Alegre Manifesto is comprised by prominent scholars
and activists Aminata Traoré, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Eduardo Galeano, José Saramago, François
Houtart, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Armand Mattelart, Roberto Savio, Riccardo Petrella, Ignacio
Ramonet, Bernard Cassen, Samir Amin, Atilio Boron, Samuel Ruiz Garcia, Tariq Ali, Frei Betto,
Emir Sader, Walden Bello and Immanuel Wallerstein.
Michael Hardt is a professor of literature at Duke University, Durham, the United States, and coauthor
(with Toni Negri) of Empire and Multitudes.
Sergio Haddad is president of the Brazilian Association of NGO's and executive secretary of. the Acao
Educativa Assessoria Pesuisa e. Informaçao, a Sao Paulo-based organisation for adult-education
research.
Dorothea Haerlin is with ATTAC-Germany and the Berlin Water Table.
François Houtart was for three decades professor at the Catholic University of Leuven and presently codirects the World Forum for Alternatives and Centre Tricontinental.
Madhuresh Kumar is a researcher and social activist, CACIM programmes coordinator, secretary of the
Kolkata civil organisation Unnayan, collaborator on the books World Social Forum: Challenging
Empires and Talking New Politics, and author of Globalisation, State Policies, and Sustainability of
Rights.
Peter Marcuse is a lawyer and planner who teaches urban planning at Columbia University in New York
City, and who has authored Globalizing Cities and Of States and Cities.
Steve Martinot has worked as a machinist, truck driver and union organiser, presently teaches at San
Francisco State University, and recently authored The Rule of Racialization.
Antonio Martins, a founder of the World Social Forum and International Council member, has worked
in many alternative papers in Brazil, and is responsible for the Brazilian edition of Le Monde
Diplomatique, as well as serving as a facilitator of ATTAC-Brazil.
Francine Mestrum is a Belgian social scientist and specialist on development issues (and author of
Mondialisation et pauvreté), and an activist with ATTAC.
Prishani Naidoo is an activist and researcher with the Anti-Privatisation Forum, and a post-graduate
student at the Centre for Civil Society.
Geoffrey Pleyers, a Belgian sociologist focusing on global social movements, is FNRS Post-doctoral
Researcher at the University of Louvain (Belgium) and an associate researcher at the Centre d’Analyse et
d’Intervention Sociologiques (Paris) and at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance (LSE). He
attended the first five World Social Forumsas well as the 2006 Polycentric WSF in Bamako.
Ruth Reitan is based at the University of Miami’s Department of International Studies, and authored
Global Activism and The Rise and Decline of an Alliance: Cuba and African American Leaders in the
1960s.
Jai Sen, director of CACIM, is an architect, urban designer and a civil campaigner on dwelling, labour,
planning and rights related issues, and co-editor of World Social Forum: Challenging Empires.
Subir Sinha is Lecturer in Development Studies and Chair of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the
University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, and a scholar activist on social and
environmental issues, the history of Indian development, contemporary social movements,
neoliberalism and civil society, and transnational development regimes.
Teivo Teivainen is chair of the politics department at the University of Helsinki, teaches at the San
Marcos University in Lima, coordinates the activities of the Network Institute for Global
Democratization in the Americas, and authored or coauthored books including Enter Economism Exit
Politics, A Possible World, Dolar Un Voto and El poder mundial y desafíos democráticos.
Marko Ulvila is a Finnish free lance researcher and democracy activist based in Tampere, the member
secretary of Democracy Forum Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – Finland, and chairperson of NIGD.
Ruby van der Wekken is the NIGD’s World Social Forum coordinator.
Ahmed Veriava is a Johannesburg movement activist, an analyst with Research and Education for
Development, and a masters student at the Centre for Civil Society in Durban.
Peter Waterman, is a British scholar-activist of international labour and social movements, and co-editor
of World Social Forum: Challenging Empires and author of Los nuevos tejidos del internacionalismo
y la solidaridad’ (The New Nervous System of Internationalism and Solidarity).
Chico Whitaker, winner of the 2006 ‘Right Livelihood Award’, is a WSF cofounder, a former city
councilor for the Workers Party (resigning in 2006 due to political disagreements), and author of The
Challenge of the World Social Forum.