KARACHI, Sept 23: The city will play host to the annual conference of the World Social Forum in January next year. The theme of the upcoming WSF meeting is “Another world is possible”.

This was announced at an introductory WSF meeting held at the Arts Council on Friday evening. The conference will be held at the Expo Centre in Gulshan-i-Iqbal on Jan 24-29, 2006.

Fahim Zaman Khan said it would be incorrect to say that WSF began in 2001. “The seeds of WSF were sown by the protests following a World Trade Organization meeting in 1997-98. It is known that one per cent of the world’s population controls 57 per cent of its wealth,” he said.

He said that one of the much-trumpeted merits of the WTO mechanism was that Pakistan’s textiles would receive a boost following the dismantling of trade barriers. “But a study recently found that 109 textile units in Lahore and 138 textile units in Karachi have been closed till Jan 1, 2005,” he said.

He said the number of registered WSF delegates had been recording an increase, up to 133,000 in 2005.

Baseer Naveed said WSF placed a great deal of emphasis on local resistance movements, especially those movements which were waged by oppressed people fighting forced evacuations and other types of injustice.

Asim Butt said that the “reawakened left” of the country was determined to take on obscurantist forces, adding that WSF should seek to attract the youth in addition to committed workers. He suggested that the visual arts could be employed for this purpose.

Anoushe Alam said that WSF message should be that we need arms (hands) for peace and not the other arms (weapons).

Farhat Perveen said WSF provided public-spirited people to sink their differences and espouse all sorts of social causes. She said that this kind of work required a participatory approach in which activists not only aligned themselves with the world’s movements working for common social causes but also encouraged such local forces to come together.

Nasir Mansoor said that workers of the city, known as the hub of industrial activities, had expressed their resolve to oppose the neo-liberal agenda of the government bent upon the privatization of public utilities.

Raheel Iqbal said globalization and democracy were mutually exclusive ideas. He said that every time an election was held in the country, people’s faith in democracy was weakened.

Quoting Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Ajaz Ahmad said that though time allocation by WSF for a comprehensive debate on social issues was limited, it was good that at least this space for public consultation was being created.

Proposed themes for WSF 2006 are: Imperialism, militarization and armed conflicts in the region and peace movements; Natural resources Rights, peoples’ control and privatization, and trans-boundary disputes; Trade Development and globalization; Social Justice Human Rights and Governance; State and religion, pluralism and fundamentalism; Nation, nationalities and ethnic and cultural identifies; Development strategies, poverty unemployment and displacement; Peoples’ movements and alternative strategies; Women, patriarchy and social change; Environment, ecology and livelihoods.