Charter of Principles
The Committee of Brazilian organizations that conceived and organized the first World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre from 25 to 30 January 2001, considers it necessary and legitimate, after evaluating the results of the Forum and the expectations it raised, to establish a Charter of Principles to guide the continuation of this initiative. The Principles of the Charter, to be respected by all those who wish to participate in this process and organize new editions of the World Social Forum, consolidation of the decisions that presided over the holding of the Porto Alegre Forum and ensured its success and extend its reach by setting guidelines resulting from the logic of these decisions.
1. The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society opposed to neoliberalism and rule the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among human beings and the Earth.
2. The World Social Forum in Porto Alegre was an event located in time and space. From now on, in the certainty proclaimed at Porto Alegre that “another world is possible”, it becomes a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives, which can not be reduced to the events supporting it.
3. The World Social Forum is a world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this process have an international dimension.
4. The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of globalization commanded by the large multinational corporations and governments and international institutions to serve their interests, with the complicity of national governments. They are designed to prevail as a new stage of world history, a globalization of solidarity that respects universal human rights and the de tod @ s @ s citizens of all nations and the environment, supported by systems and institutions democratic in the service of social justice, equality and sovereignty of peoples.
5. The World Social Forum brings together and interlinks only organizations and civil society movements from all countries of the world, but is not intended to be a body representing world civil society.
6. The meetings of the World Social Forum do not deliberate as the World Social Forum. No one is therefore allowed to express, on behalf of the Forum in any of their issues, positions claiming to be a tod @ s @ s its participants. The participants should not be called on to take decisions by vote or acclamation, as all participants of the Forum, on declarations or proposals for action that engages the @ s tod @ s or them and that propose to be taken position of the Forum as a body. He thus does not constitute a locus of power to be disputed by the participants in its meetings, nor does it intend to constitute the only option for interrelation and action by organizations and movements that participate in it.
7. It should, however, assured, organizations or groups of organizations that participate in meetings of the Forum, the freedom to decide for them, on declarations or actions they may decide on, whether singly or in coordination with other participants. The World Social Forum undertakes to circulate such decisions widely by the means at its disposal, without directing, hierarchies, censorship and restrictions, but as deliberations of the organizations or groups of organizations that made the decisions.
8. The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-denominational, non-governmental and non-partisan, that articulates in a decentralized, networked organizations and movements engaged in concrete action at local level to the international to build another world.
9. The World Social Forum will always be open to pluralism and diversity of commitments and actions of organizations and movements that decide to participate, as well as the diversity of genders, ethnicities, cultures, generations and physical capacities, providing they abide by this Charter of Principles . Should not participate in the Forum party representations nor military organizations. May be invited to participate in a personal capacity, governors and legislatures who accept the commitments of this Charter.
10. The World Social Forum is opposed to all totalitarian and reductionist
the economy, development and history and the use of violence as a means of social control by the state. It upholds respect for Human Rights, the practice of real democracy, participatory relations, in equality, solidarity and peace among people, ethnicities, genders and peoples, and condemns all forms of domination and subjection of one person by another.
11. The World Social Forum as a space for debate, is a movement of ideas that prompts reflection, and transparent dissemination of the results of this reflection on the mechanisms and instruments of domination by capital, on means and actions to resist and overcome that domination, the alternatives proposed to solve the problems of exclusion and social inequality that the process of capitalist globalization, with its dimensions racist, sexist and environmentally destructive is creating internationally and within countries.
12. The World Social Forum as a space for exchanging experiences, encourages understanding and mutual recognition of organizations and movements that participate, recognizing their exchange, especially that society is building to concentrate economic activity and political action in addressing the needs of human being and respect for nature, now and for future generations.
13. The World Social Forum as a space of articulation, seeks to strengthen and create new national and international links among organizations and movements of society, to increase both in the sphere of public life and private life, the ability of non-violent social resistance to the process of dehumanisation the world is undergoing and the violence used by the State, and reinforce the humanising measures being taken by the action of these movements and organizations.
14. The World Social Forum is a process that encourages organizations and movements that participate in it to situate their actions, from local to national level and seeking active participation in international fora, such as issues of planetary citizenship, introducing the global agenda the practices that they are trying to build a new world in solidarity.
Approved and adopted in São Paulo, on April 9, 2001, entities that make up the Organization Committee of the World Social Forum, approved with modifications by the International World Social Forum on 10 June 2001.
