The sudden assertion of human criteria within a dehumanising framework of political manipulation can be like a flash of lightning illuminating a dark landscape
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summits of the worldDo international summits work for people at the sharp end of globalisation? Simon Maxwell argues poverty measurement, picks a hair from James Wolfensohn’s jacket, and gazes longingly at the barricades…while dressed in a suit. Barry Coates of the World Development Movemen returns from a WTO summit with defiant pessimism. Maria Adebowale of Capacity Global spars with the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton. Key actors and observers of the global summit caravan unpack its contents.
How to get there? Where to stay? When to break cover? Whether you are protestor or journalist, tourist or secret policeman going to the G8 summit, Carolyn Tan’s local guide tells you what you need to know about its Scottish location: Auchterarder. Read the rest of this post...
The G8 debt relief plan is far less generous than it looks, says Alex Wilks of the European Network on Debt and Development. Read the rest of this post...
From teashops to the tourist information centre, Dominic Hilton scopes out the site of the G8 summit. Read the rest of this post...
The United States joined with other states to wreck the nuclear non-proliferation treaty’s 2005 review conference. Patricia Lewis of the United Nations Institute of Disarmament Research examines what went wrong. Read the rest of this post...
Loose yet organic, exclusive yet open, competitive yet dialogic, religious yet cross-cultural. Lula, Sharon Stone, Bill Gates, and Bono. Simon Zadek tracks the World Economic Forum’s reinvention as “tomorrow’s model of global governance”.
From Baghdad, Haider Saeed reflects on how the image of Arab / Islamic leaders in “traditional” dress at the G8 summit in Sea Island symbolises the subordinate integration of non–western polities into America’s universalist but also imperial understanding of democracy. Read the rest of this post...
A third visit to the World Economic Forum left the sustainability campaigner John Elkington enthusiastic about a gathering force which can connect pro- and anti-globalisers: social entrepreneurs. Read the rest of this post...
This Swedish activist combines observation of everyday Indian experience with her own political commitment to draw a lesson from Mumbai’s World Social Forum: women in the global justice movement are taking possession of space and voice. Read the rest of this post...
The World Social Forum in Mumbai was democracy in action in search of a fairer, people-centred world, says one of its Indian organisers. But to advance its global ambitions, must it look beyond Brazil as the site of future forums? Read the rest of this post...
The Ford Foundation, a large United States philanthropy, supported the World Social Forum’s first three meetings in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and will participate in the latest gathering in Mumbai, India. Lisa Jordan of Ford – one of openDemocracy.net’s backers – talks to Caspar Henderson about the foundation’s engagement with global civil society. Read the rest of this post...
Three years on from the first World Social Forum in Brazil’s Porto Alegre, an organiser of the latest WSF in India presents his vision of the purpose of this global gathering of activists, popular movements and NGOs. Read the rest of this post...
When poor people can speak, the world will change – and mobile communications technology is giving them the tools for transformation. Read the rest of this post...
The World Summit on the Information Society venue was bland, the rhetoric cloudy, the chocolates consoling – but ideas and energy flowed around the fringes. Read the rest of this post...
The appropriate use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) could make a vast contribution to solving the problems of development and democracy. But to realise this potential, a global conversation is needed to match the global nature of economic, social and environmental challenges. Read the rest of this post...
The UN’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva is intended to create ways of bridging the global ‘digital divide’. But will its political tensions and complex agenda make it less of an “internet-Kyoto” and more of an arid talk shop? Read the rest of this post...
The energy and scale, the international and human presence of the second European Social Forum in Paris reveal its already strong foundations. But its real tests are still to come. Read the rest of this post...
Many Germans continue to believe that their country is the vanguard of environmental and social progress in Europe. The latest European Social Forum is an opportunity to puncture this illusion. Read the rest of this post...
The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg delivered disappointment to NGO activists – and this leading environmental campaigner says that things have got worse since then. But, he argues, it is too early to give up on UN summits altogether. Read the rest of this post...
A veteran green activist, allergic to summits, looks at the past and future of the World Economic Forum. Read the rest of this post...
At the summit, the rich were for globalisation, the poor against. But a larger message did come through the divisions: we need a different vision. We must ‘build a humane and caring global society’. Read the rest of this post...
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