wfn.org | Church groups drawn to Brazil forum to debate forms of globalization

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org>]

Note #7031 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

29-January-2002
02042

Church groups drawn to Brazil forum to debate forms of globalization 
 
by Sergio Ferrari
Ecumenical News International
  
BERNE, Switzerland - Leaders of ecumenical organizations and churches are among tens of thousands of people expected to gather this week in Brazil for a global forum against
corporate-driven globalization.  

Called the World Social Forum, the gathering - from Jan. 31 to Feb. 5 in Porto Alegre - is timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum, a three-decade-old annual meeting of world business and government leaders.  

The World Social Forum was launched last year to provide an alternative point of view to the older forum. Meeting on the theme "Another World Is Possible," participants at the Brazilian gathering intend to debate political and economic alternatives to globalization.  

"Not only is another world possible, but it is urgent to construct it," said Francisco "Chico" Whitaker, executive secretary of the Justice and Peace Commission (BCJP) of the Brazilian National Council of (Catholic) Bishops, which is putting together a session on world starvation. The BCJP is one of the eight groups organizing the forum.  

The five-day event is expected to draw more than 12,000 delegates and tens of thousands of other participants. The forum will offer 60 separate debates and more than 900 workshops, as well as an unofficial tribunal on Third World debt, and numerous presentations by international figures. 

Prominent figures expected to appear include Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Nobel peace prize laureate; the Argentine Methodist Bishop Federico Pagura; and the Brazilian liberation theologian Frei Betto.   

Among ecumenical and church organizations planning to participate are the World Council of Churches; the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI), whose headquarters are in Ecuador; the Oscar Romero Ecumenical Initiative of Uruguay; the Porto Alegre Institute of the Methodist Church; and the Brazilian National Ecumenical Commission Against Racism.  

The other organizers of the event are: the Brazilian Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (ABONG); Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC); the Brazilian Business Association for Citizenship (CIVES); the Central Trade Union Confederation (CUT); the Centre for Global Justice (CJG); the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST); and the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Studies (IBASE). 
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