World Social Forum (WSF) and the Migrations World Social Forum (MWSF)

A Worldwide Movement of Migrants and Solidarity Organisations is possible and necessary!

• Call-Appel-Appello-Llamado EN FR IT ES
• Document AMM – AR
• Document AMM – FR
• Document on MWA – EN
• Documento AMM – ES
• Documento AMM – IT

International migrations have shaped the world and keep doing it. This process of mobility of billions of people, driven by political, economic and ecological issues, makes the global crisis of the current system evident.

Almost every country in the world relates to this humanity, particularly to the poorest and unwanted people, erecting walls, building places of detention and applying more and more repressive, racist and discriminatory policies. Billions of human beings are condemned to live in an irregular way and in fear, in a out-and-out “emergency condition”.

Migrants and the movement that supports them, try to resist and react daily to this out-and-out war against the “Wretched of the Earth” and their fundamental rights. Country policies about migration are more and more coordinated and migrant people are often deprived of their rights. They are considered manpower to take advantage of, and/or invaders. And this situation is getting worse because of the economic crisis.

A real application of human, social, political and economic rights, especially for migrant people, will not be possible if the current neoliberal order is not called into question. For doing it, it is essential that movements for migrants work in synergy with the others, since migration is a cross topic.

We live in a unique moment, in which it is necessary to elaborate world-wide strategies that could modify relations of power in behalf of migrant people. These world-wide strategies should, obviously, coordinate to local, regional and national actions.

The launch of the process of the World Social Forum (WSF) and the Migrations World Social Forum (MWSF) has certainly allowed the migrants movement to make a breakthrough toward the awareness of the necessity of an international character.

The declaration of the Movements Conference at the 2008 III MWSF, stated that:

“We migrants, displaced persons and refugees, and our organizations, constitute ourselves in a new political subject and world social force (…). Our identity as migrants, refugees and displaced people does not deny our other multiple identities and fights”

And the IV MWSF declaration, advocated the transfer from a Forums view as independent events

“toward a process of education and world collaboration (…) that allows the reinforcement of migrants organizations in decision making areas, and the reinforcement of networks for better dealing with consequences of a crisis model and building a new one”.

At a regional level too, some dynamics have developed within the WFS that have looked for a greater coordination of networks and associations at a continental and intercontinental level. The 2004 declaration of the Foro Social de las Americas and the two declarations of thematic conferences about migration, held in 2007 in Bruxelles and in 2012 in Oujda by the Maghreb Social Forum, are an example.

Simultaneously, networks and associations have developed fights, campaigns and initiatives, very different from each other, and distributed throughout the world, that, actually, represent an international character:

• Struggles in different areas of the world for the regulation of sans papier (Spain, France, Belgium, Italy, Morocco, Argentina…);
• Struggles of asylum applicants and refugees, for the respect the asylum right and the admission to the asylum procedure (Germany, Austria, Greece…);
• The first experience of protest organized by Latinos in the USA on May, 1st 2006;
• The World Migrants Charter, born during the 2006 MWSF;
• The campaigns ongoing in various world areas for the freedom of movement and the global citizenship;
• The global action day on December, 18th
• The campaigns for denouncing and closing detention centers;
• The campaigns for the immigrants’ voting right in Latin America;
• Struggles for the respect of rights of domestic workers.

These examples show how many resistance actions are underway all around the world. However the complexity of the issues that we must face, needs more communication, debate and a convergence of networks and associations both from a geographic point of view and in regard to contents and ways of action. It has to do with taking on a challenge that brings to build with more lucidity and determination, the fundamentals for a world movement of migrants and solidarity associations.

In this context, the organization of the “Migrants and Solidarity Organisations World Assembly”, during the World Social Forum in Tunis, could represent a first step of structuring and convergence. Then, this conference could keep going on during next WSF and MWSF, and represent a place where we could develop analysis, appraisals, and proposals through new agreement components (whence the notion of “assembly”). But it also wants to be a “space for permanent dialogue” for migrants and solidarity associations at a world level, and it wants to support the actions of different social subjects so that fighting processes for the recognition of migrants rights in the world, could strengthen themselves.

How to build these structures and proposals

• Raccogliere in occasione dell’Assemblea mondiale dei migranti e delle associazioni di solidarietà, l’insieme delle dichiarazioni e analisi prodotte dai numerosi ateliers e dibattiti organizzati durante il FSM 2013;
• To realize a website where to:
  • Collect various recommendations and declarations;
  • Encourage exchanges and convergences of associations;
  • Share means and experiences;
  • Give information about struggles;
  • Collect various awareness and education tools, developed by different movements;
• To build a common agenda of struggles and shared actions;
• To improve the communication and the coordination between WSF and MWSF;
• To promote solidarity among movements;
• To promote the creation of dynamics not centralized but pluralist and horizontal, that could allow to face the complexity of organizing experiences, and the complexity of the subjects depending on which region we belong to;
• To share the good practices, the victories and the defeats, and to value all the experiences, without a too much strict discrimination between highest and smallest purposes, but placing them in a common context.

It is about starting with modesty a path that could lead to a real construction of a world force, that could assert at every level the right to choose our own place of residence, to stay where we live and to move and settle freely and without obstacles all around the world.

This kind of process necessarily needs a common long-term commitment and capacity of coordination. The “Migrants and Solidarity Organisations World Assembly” that will be held in Tunis (Tunisia) on March, 2013, must be a stage within a broader process of debate and exchange about migratory policies and the condition of the social and resistance movement.