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This Social Forum is well-timed. It takes place at a moment when the world faces some big crises such as the food and energy crisis and an unprecedented financial crisis. This Forum is therefore an opportunity to help find solutions to those crises. Hence the organisers’ decision to make ample room for debates around those issues. Present to the Forum were not only the main civil society representatives but also some victims including young people, women, indigenous peoples and small producers. In my opinion, the time is no longer for accusations and confessions, but for action. It is at that level that suggestions must be followed with implementation. Political will is needed in order to transform those suggestions or proposals into concrete actions. It is at that level that mechanisms must be found to allow politicians to work hand in hand with civil society in order to launch concrete actions that can reduce the peoples’ suffering.

The Social Forum is a place where alliances and networks can be built so as to reflect on whatever the challenge is. I will cite here as an example the indigenous people of the South Asian Peoples’ Initiatives (SAPI) and those from South and North America. The warm encounters, the mutual acceptation, the convergence of some viewpoints went beyond the expectations of any one delegation. Not only did they dance and exchange their leaders’ symbols but they also organised additional meetings to lay the foundations of sustainable alliances. What brought them together is the almost common denominator of the challenges for survival with which they are confronted. After their dignity has been denied, it is now their means to survival that are at risk. Yet, despite linguistic barriers, their hearts and faces were able to engage in dialogue.

Religious organisations or religious-leaning ones find more and more their place at the World Social Forum. They took part in the inaugural march with their symbols and messages: the Indian Bishop’s Conference – No Peace without Respect for Human Rights; the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur – with an effigy of their assassinated sister, Dorothy Stang; and the Marist brothers who from their house with their brass band encouraged the marchers to walk on under a torrential rain. Not only did they bring to the Forum the groups they prepared, but more importantly they talked openly about their convictions, their faiths and of the necessity to have some ethical values to rely on while trying to solve problems. They assume their role of bridge-builders between peoples.

I have the impression that Africa was almost absent from this gathering. I saw few Africans, few organised groups from Africa and few African issues discussed. It was the chance for Africa to have her voice heard once more on the financial crisis, her endemic wars and her crowds of refugees, the struggle for democracy and good governance, the loot of her natural resources. Moreover, Africa did not bring her forest people (Pygmies from Cameroon, Republic of Central Africa, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Congo-Brazzaville and the Democratic Republic of Congo), the Batwa of Burundi and Rwanda and the Hottentots or Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. Neither did she bring the endangered people of the Kalahari or Sahara deserts (the Tuareg), of her great rivers or lakes (Congo River, Victoria and Chad lakes, the Nile…). Nor were the issues of deforestation, energy crisis, pollution, toxic waste dumping (Ivory Coast) raised. In a word, not only could Africa have benefited from her participation in the Forum, but even more important she could have seized that opportunity to raise awareness about issues concerning minorities or endangered peoples or her environment and her holistic conception of the environment.