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Global poverty targeted as 100,000 gather in Brazil
Activists join presidents as annual World Social Forum gets under way
in Porto Alegre
John Vidal in Porto Alegre
Wednesday January 26, 2005
The Guardian
Elvis, Betu and Renatu live in a rubbish dump. Every day the
teenagers take out their wire pushcarts, collect the waste of the
southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre and bring it back to the
illegal slum of Chocolatado to sort and then sell on.
It's a grim place, made of reclaimed tarpaulins, waste timber, old
plastic and metal. None of the shacks have running water or toilets,
and most of them are deep in litter.
This, then, is the ideal backdrop for the launch today of the World
Social Forum, which meets annually to discuss issues affecting
developing countries.
Begun five years ago specifically to counter the annual meeting of
world business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland, it has
unexpectedly become a global political and social phenomenon.
More than 100,000 activists will be in Porto Alegre this year. They
will be joined by two presidents, several Nobel peace and literature
prizewinners, the world's leading international non-government
groups, healthworkers, MPs, educators, unions, students, the
landless, indigenous peoples, intellectuals, environmentalists and
dissident economists.
"It's not perfect, but it is the most tangible global rejection of
the neo-liberal globalisation policies of the US and G8 countries,"
said Ricardo Jimenez, a Uruguyan doctor.
"But it needs to be seen in context. More than 1 billion people in
developing countries live in slums; 800 million go hungry every day;
27 million adults are slaves; 245 million children have to work. The
poor are everywhere still getting poorer, the cities are
disintegrating and bankrupt. It is a response to a global scandal."
In other years there has been a video linkup between Davos and Porto
Alegre, but this year the two worlds will stand further apart than
ever, with no formal contact beyond accusations and petitions sent
from Brazil.
"Developing countries now owe $1.6 trillion [£860bn]. In 2004 they
transferred $300bn to rich countries," said Eric Toussaint, chair of
the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt. "Yet we can say
that the people of the third world are creditors. They have already
paid their debts many times over."
The highlights of the forum will be the flying visit of the populist
Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and President Hugo
Ch‡vez of Venezuela. Both will address 30,000 people in Porto
Alegre's main stadium, but the reception given to the two most
charismatic South American leaders could be very different.
Mr Da Silva is still popular but there is growing impatience at the
slow speed of the radical reforms expected.
According to many at the forum, Mr Ch‡vez is increasingly the person
to whom the continent looks for significant change. Significantly, Mr
Da Silva will fly on to Davos for talks with world leaders after his
Porto Alegre appearance, while Mr Chavez is expected to spend time in
an encampment of the Brazilian landless.
But people are still upbeat. "Analysts are talking of a new South
America. There is a sense that this is the only con tinent now
challenging the US," said Martin Fernandes, a Brazilian doctor.
"There are now leftist presidents in Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina,
as well as in Uruguay and Ecuador ... We have a sense that change is
possible."
The forum has been criticised in the past for not including
marginalised peoples. But this year it has invited some of the
poorest in the world, including dalits (untouchables) from Nepal,
Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, former slave communities
from Brazil, and more than 100 tribes of Brazilian Indians.
It may also be the last forum for several years in Porto Alegre.
"There has been a very strong proposal that, instead of one single
event, the forum next year will take place simultaneously in six
cities on six continents, with smaller events in many towns," said an
international committee member, Mukul Sharma.
"It would signal that the WSF is expanding and becoming a global
force. It is also highly probable that in 2007 it will go to Africa
for the first time."
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