As the Social Movements Assembly of the World Social Forum of Dakar, 2011,
we are gathered here to affirm the fundamental contribution of Africa and
its peoples in the construction of human civilisation. Together, the peoples
of all the continents are struggling mightily to oppose the domination of
capital, hidden behind illusory promises of economic progress and political
stability. Complete decolonization for oppressed peoples remains for us, the
social movements of the world, a challenge of the greatest importance.
We affirm our support for and our active solidarity with the people of
Tunisia, Egypt and the Arab world who have risen up to demand a true
democracy and build the people´s power. Their struggles are lighting the
path to another world, free from oppression and exploitation.
We strongly affirm our support for the Ivory Coast, African and world
peoples in their struggles for sovereign and participatory democracy. We
defend the right to self-determination for all peoples.
Through the WSF process, the Social Movements Assembly is the place where we
come together through our diversity, in order to forge common struggles and
a collective agenda to fight against capitalism, patriarchy, racism and all
forms of discrimination.
We are celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Social Forum, which was
first held in Porto Alegre in 2001. Since that time, we have built a common
history of work which led to some progress, particularly in Latin America,
where we have been able to intervene in neoliberal alliances and to create
several alternatives for just development that truly honor nature.
In these ten years, we have also witnessed the eruption of a systemic crisis
that has expanded into a food crisis, an environmental crisis, and financial
and economic crises, and has led to an increase in migrations and forced
displacement, exploitation, debt levels and social inequities.
We denounce the part played by the main actors in the system (banks,
transnational companies, the mass media, international institutions, …) who,
in their constant quest for maximum profits, continue with their
interventionist politics of war, military occupation, so-called humanitarian
missions, new military bases, plundering natural resources, exploitation of
entire peoples, and ideological manipulation. We also denounce their
attempts to co-opt our movements through their funding of social sectors
that serve their interests, and we reject their methods of assistance which
generate dependence.
Capitalism´s destructive force impacts every aspect of life itself, for all
the peoples of the world. Yet each day we see new movements rise, struggling
to reverse the ravages of colonialism and to achieve well-being and dignity
for all. We declare that we, the people, will no longer bear the costs of
their crisis and that, within capitalism, there is no escape from this
crisis. This only reaffirms the need for us, as social movements, to come
together to forge a common strategy to guide our struggles against
capitalism.
We fight against transnational corporations because they support the
capitalist system, privatize life, public services and common goods such as
water, air, land, seeds and mineral resources. Transnational corporations
promote wars through their contracts with private corporations and
mercenaries ; their extractionist practices endanger life and nature,
expropriating our land and developing genetically modified seeds and food,
taking away the peoples’ right to food and destroying biodiversity.
We demand that all people should enjoy full soverignty in choosing their way
of life. We demand the implementation of policies to protect local
production, to give dignity to agricultural work and to protect the
ancestral values of life. We denounce neoliberal free-trade treaties and
demand freedom of movement for all the human beings.
We will continue to mobilize to ask for the unconditional abolition of
public debt in all the countries in the South. We also denounce, in the
countries of the North, the use of public debt to impose to unfair policies
that degrade the social welfare state.
When the G8 and G20 hold their meetings, let us mobilize across the world to
tell them, No ! We are not commodities! We will not be traded !
We fight for climate justice and food sovereignty. Global climate change is
a product of the capitalist system of production, distribution and
consumption. Transnational corporations, international financial
institutions and governments serving them do not want to reduce greenhouse
gases. We denounce ¨green capitalism ¨ and refuse false solutions to the
climate crisis such as biofuels, genetically modified organisms and
mechanisms of the carbon market like REDD, which ensnare impoverished
peoples with false promises of progress while privatizing and commodifying
the forests and territories where these peoples have been living for
thousands of years.
We defend the food sovereignty and the agreement reached during the Peoples’
Summit against Climate Change, held in Cochabamba, where true alternatives
to face the climate crisis were built with the social movements and
organisations from worldwide.
Let’s mobilize, all of us, especially on the African continent, during the
COP 17 in Durban in South Africa and in « Rio +20 » in 2012, to reassert the
peoples’ and nature’s rights and block the illegitimate Cancun Agreement.
We support sustainable peasant agriculture ; it is the true solution to the
food and climate crises and includes access to land for all who work on it.
Because of this, we call for a mass mobilisation to stop the landgrab and
support local peasants struggles.
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We fight against violence against women, often conducted in militarily
occupied territories, but also violence affecting women who are criminalized
for taking part in social struggles. We fight against domestic and sexual
violence perpetrated on women because they are considered objects or goods,
because the sovereignty of their bodies and minds is not acknowledged. We
fight against the trade in women, girls and boys. We call on everyone to
mobilize together, everywhere in the world, against violence against women.
We defend sexual diversity, the right to gender self-determination and we
oppose all homophobia and sexist violence.
We fight for peace and against war, colonialism, occupations and the
militarization of our lands.
The imperialist powers use military bases to trigger conflicts, control and
plunder natural resources, and support anti-democratic initiatives, as they
did with the coup in Honduras and the military occupation of Haiti. They
promote wars and conflicts as in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Democratic Republic
of the Congo and many others.
We must intensify the fight against repression and the criminalisation of
the people’s struggles and strengthen the solidarity and initiatives between
peoples, such as the Global Boycott Disinvestment and Sanctions Movement
against Israel. Our struggle also aims at NATO and to ban all nuclear
weapons.
Each of these struggles implies a battle of ideas in which we cannot
progress without democraticizing communication. We affirm that it is
possible to build another kind of globalization, made from and by the
people, and with the essential participation of the youth, the women, the
peasants and indigenous peoples.
The Assembly of the Social Movements calls the forces and popular actors
from all countries to develop two major mobilisations, coordinated on the
international level, to participate in the emancipation and
selfdetermination of the people and strengthen the struggle against
capitalism.
Inspired by the struggles of the peoples of Tunisia and Egypt, we call for
March 20th to be made a day of international solidarity with the uprisings of
the Arab and African people, whose every advance supports the struggles of
all peoples: the resistance of the Palestinian and Saharian peoples ;
European, Asian and African mobilisations against debt and structural
adjusment plans ; and all the processes of change underway in Latin America.
We also call for a Global Day of Action Against Capitalism on October 12th,
when we express in myriad ways our rejection of a system that is destroying
everything in its path.
Social movements of the world, let us advance towards a global unity to
shatter the capitalist system !
We shall prevail!