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The World Social Forum developed as a response of the growing international movement against neo-liberal economic policies being pursued in most countries and capitalist-led globalisation. For decades, international financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been making decisions that affect the lives of people all over the world, without being subject to any sort of democratic control. People in Third World countries, as well as the poor and excluded sectors of industrialised countries, suffer the devastating effects of economic globalisation and the dictatorship of international institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO and the governments that serve their interests. The World Social Forum was conceived as an international forum against neo-liberal policies and capitalist-led globalisation built around the slogan Another World Is Possible . It seeks to provide a space for discussing alternatives, for exchanging experiences and for strengthening alliances between social movements, unions of the working people and NGOs. The first WSF was held in January 2001, in the city of Porto Alegre , Brazil . It was timed to coincide with the holding of the World Economic Forum in Davos , Switzerland . Every year since 1971, an exclusive club of chief executives of the world's largest and most influential transnational corporations meets with academics and political leaders in the Swiss resort town of Davos , to chart the global economic agenda. The WSF was thus also seen as a counterweight to the options proposed by the World Economic Forum. The first WSF in 2001 saw the participation of approximately 20,000 people (of whom 4,702 were registered delegates) representing over 500 national and international organisations from more than 100 countries. Seeing the success and enthusiasm generated, it was decided that the WSF would become an annual event. The second WSF held in Jan/Feb 2002 was an even larger event. It saw the participation of 15,000 registered delegates and a total of some 55,000 people from 131 countries. The decision to hold the Forum in Brazil was also significant. While on the one hand Brazil is one of the countries that has been greatly affected by neo-liberal policies, on the other hand, different sectors of Brazilian society are resisting these policies, in rural and urban areas, in shantytowns, factories, political parties, churches, schools, etc. The richness of Brazilian grassroots organisations represented a source of inspiration for the development of the World Social Forum. Porto Alegre itself is situated in the southernmost province of Brazil , and the pro-left government of the province and the city's mayor supported the Forum in many ways. The World Social Forum is not an organisation, not a united front platform, but "...an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and inter-linking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society centred on the human person". (From the WSF Charter of Principles).Neither does the WSF have a common political manifesto on which all those who participate have to agree. The basis of the World Social Forum is anti-imperialism, anti neo-liberalism, and the conviction that ' another world is possible '. The basic idea is the creation of a space for everyone to come together with a respect for that space. The WSF process includes different trends. There are those, for example, who say that a reform of the WTO and the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank and IMF) is possible, and there are those who believe that reforming them is impossible and that a more basic and systemic change is necessary. There are those who propose dialogue, and others who believe only in confrontation. Source: www.wsfindia.org
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