[E-rundbrief] Info 991 - Social Movements Assembly, Dakar 2011

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 991 - Final Declaration of the Social Movements 
Assembly. Adopted by the World Assembly of Social Movements with 2000
participants the 10th February in Dakar during the World Social Forum. 
WSF 2011, February 10th, Dakar (Senegal)

Bad Ischl, 18.2.2011

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Final Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly

Adopted by the World Assembly of Social Movements with 2000
participants the 10th February in Dakar during the World Social Forum.

WSF 2011, February 10th, Dakar (Senegal)

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.

´

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 t he
uprisings of th e 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!

http://viacampesina.org/en/

-- 

La Via Campesina
Via Campesina is an international movement of peasants, small- and
medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people,
rural youth and agricultural workers. We are an autonomous, pluralist
and multicultural movement, independent of any political, economic, or
other type of affiliation. Born in 1993, La Via Campesina now gathers
about 150 organisations in 70 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and
the Americas.

International Operational Secretariat:
Jln. Mampang Prapatan XIV no 5 Jakarta Selatan, Jakarta 12790 Indonesia
Tel/fax: +62-21-7991890/+62-21-7993426
Email: viacampesina at viacampesina.org

-- 

Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
Wolfgangerstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
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Honoured by the (Austrian) "Journalism-Award from below 2010"