World Social Forum

The third WSF was again held in Porto Alegre, in January 2003. There were many parallel workshops, including, for example the Life After Capitalism workshop, which proposed focused discussion on anti-capitalist and participative possibilities for different aspects of social, political, economic, communication structures.[10] Among the speakers was American linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky. Some credit this meeting of World Social Forum for the connections that made the global day of action on February 15, 2003 so successful. The global day of action was an international protest attended by an estimated 12 million people in 700 cities across 60 countries protesting the Bush Administration's plans to invade and occupy Iraq. At the time, the New York Times called international public opinion, a superpower to counter the United States.[11]

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  Nobel peace prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
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  Ignacio Ramonet, then editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique
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  Protest by the Japanese delegation
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  Walden Bello, executive director of the Focus on the Global South NGO
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  Youth camp
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  Social documentary photographer Sebastião Salgado
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  Crowd gathering
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  Professor and activist Noam Chomsky

The fourth WSF was held in Mumbai, India, from 16 January to 21 January 2004. It was the first meeting of the World Social Forum held outside Brazil and its success has encouraged the WSF to expand in scope across the global South. Some credit it with inspiring the Asian Social Forum held in November of that year.[3] The attendance was expected to be 75,000 and it shot over by thousands. The cultural diversity was one notable aspect of the forum. A notable decision that was taken was the stand on free software. One of the key speakers at the WSF 2004 was Joseph Stiglitz. In contrast to earlier meetings, which had focused more on Euro-centric political intellectualism, the 2004 meeting included marches, as well as colorful and lively demonstrations.

The 2004 meeting also saw the convening of the General Assembly of the Global Anti-War Movement, an idea that originated from the Asian Social Forum in November 2003, and broadly coalesced in response to the invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003. The Assembly had few activists from the United States, but overwhelmingly tried to articulate that they opposed the policy, and not the country itself. The former director-general of UNESCO, Federico Mayor Zaragoza, said at the Forum, "We must state it clearly. We must say to President Bush that we do not agree with the way he controls the world. We must tell him that he has to govern with his mind, not with might."[3]

The fifth World Social Forum 2005 was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil between 26 January and 31 January. There were 155,000 registered participants at the Forum, with most coming from Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Uruguay, and France. A number of participants in the forum released the Porto Alegre Manifesto. Since Article 6 of the World Social Forum's Charter of Principles bars the event from attempting to represent all participants through formal statements, the Porto Alegre Manifesto was released on behalf of 19 activists. This 'Group of 19' includes 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 Borón, Samuel Ruiz García, Tariq Ali, Frei Betto, Emir Sader, Walden Bello, and Immanuel Wallerstein.[12]

The sixth World Social Forum was "polycentric", held in January 2006 in Caracas, Venezuela and Bamako, Mali, and in March 2006, in Karachi, Pakistan. The Forum in Pakistan was delayed to March because of the Kashmir earthquake that had recently occurred in the area.[13][14]

The seventh World Social Forum was held in Nairobi, Kenya in January 2007. There were 66,000 registered attendees, and 1,400 participating organizations from 110 countries, making it the most globally representative WSF so far.[15] It was criticized as being 'an NGO fair'[16][17] and movements of the poor in Kenya and South Africa mounted vigorous protests against some of the NGOs that attended and, in their view, dominated the forum in the name of the African poor.

The ninth World Social Forum took place in the Brazilian city of Belém, located in the Amazon rainforest, between January 27 and February 1, 2009.[18] About 1,900 indigenous people, representing 190 ethnic groups attended the event, to raise the issue of stateless peoples, and the plights that they face. The Escarré International Centre for Ethnic Minorities and Nations helped to organize the tent for the Collective Rights of Stateless Peoples, who are marginalized in an international system that recognizes only states as political units. Various stateless ethnic groups represented were the Basques, Kurds, Palestinians, Roma, Tibetans, Mapuche, Saharawi and Australian Aborigines.[19]

The tenth edition of the World Social Forum was another decentralized affair, with about 35 national, regional and local forums taking place across the world. In Porto Alegre, the flagship space for the WSF, events and speakers were held from January 25–29, entitled "FSM 10 Years: Greater Porto Alegre". The big event held in Porto Alegre was the International Seminar "10 Years Later: Challenges and proposals for another possible world", which featured over 70 intellectuals from around the world.[20] One of the notable regional forums was the US Social Forum held in Detroit, Michigan and attended by about 18,000 people.[21]

The 2011 World Social Forum was hosted in Dakar, Senegal and ran from 06 to 11 February.[22]

The 2012 World Social Forum was hosted in Porto Alegre, Brazil and ran from 24 to 30 January.[23]

The thirteen edition of the World Social Forum took place in Tunis from 26 to 30 March 2013.[24][25]

The fourteenth edition of the World Social Forum took place in Tunis from 23 to 28 March 2015.[26] It led to the creation of the Internet Social Forum.[27]

The fifteen edition of the World Social Forum took place in Montreal from 9 to 14 August 2016.[28] It was a multilingual event which featured organizations from around the world.[29]

The sixteenth edition of the World Social Forum took place in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, from March 13 to 17, 2018.[30] Having representatives of 120 countries.[31]

The 2021 World Social Forum was hosted virtually from 23 to 31 January, 2021.[32] Representatives from 144 attended the forum, with 1,371 organizations participating.[32] The digital events attracted over 78,000 visits.[32]

The 2022 World Social Forum was held in a hybrid format, with in-person events in Mexico City, and virtual events.[33] Preliminary data from the World Social Forum reported attendance from 500 organizations, 2,080 participants, and over 31,230 online visitors.[33]

Some activities by activists attending the WSF have also been criticised, such as at the WSF 2001, where activists invaded and destroyed an experimental genetically modified plantation of the Monsanto Company.[38]

On January 26, 2001 a number of activists with Brazil's Movimento dos Sem-Terra (MST) reacted in protest to the growing role of Monsanto in global agribusiness, which was considered by the group to be unethically using their seed patents to harm the rights of rural peoples, tore up an experimental plot of transgenic crops in Não-me-Toque, 300 kilometres (190 mi) from Porto Alegre, where the World Social Forum was taking place at the time. Three days later, Jose Bove, a French citizen, was arrested by Brazilian authorities as the World Social Forum ended on January 29, 2001. Connections between the Movimento dos Sem-Terra and the World Social Forum are not well known.[39]

The WSF has, especially in recent years, been strongly criticised for replacing popular movements with non-governmental organizations (NGOs).[40][41][42] A delegation from the South Africa-based Abahlali baseMjondolo criticised the event's 2009 iteration as "dominated by" non-governmental organizations.[40] The group also argued in 2007 that the participating NGOs would sometimes compete with popular movements for access to the forum and for influence there.[41]

The 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya was criticized as an "NGO fair" by Firoze Manji, as he believed that the large number of international NGOs crowded out less formal groups of activists.[42] He also asserted that not all the attendees were properly represented, with the bigger and wealthier NGOs having far more space to talk and lead the events.[42]

Raúl Zibechi argues that there is a "crisis" of the World Social Forum in that it has been "weakened" as it has been "taken over" by "those who were most capable of 'leading' assemblies, professionals from universities and NGOs."[43]

There was also criticism of the way that CelTel had exclusive rights at the Kenyan event, the virtual monopoly of a local hotel offering food at rates that the average Kenyan could not afford, and the physical and financial exclusion of local business.[42]

A delegation from Abahlali baseMjondolo criticised the World Social Forum, following their attendance in 2009, for being too focused on Latin America, and for failing to provide delegations with adequate translational services.[40]

A demographic transformation of the organisational background has taken place since a decade ago when critical voices were raised.[44] As of 2020, preparatory meetings for the 2021 World Social Forum were run by a younger generation of female and male organisers while the founders (Oded Grajew and Chico Whiteker) usually did not intervene. Communicating languages were mainly Spanish and Portuguese (because of many Latin American organisers), and also English and French. New individuals, social groups and movements were invited to co-organise events in 2021; new ecological movements run by young generations, for example.