A/HRC/24/38
VIII.
Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly of the World Social
Forum, Tunisia, 29 March 2013 (excerpts)8
People all over the world are suffering the effects of the aggravation of a profound crisis of
capitalism, in which its agents (banks, transnational corporations, media conglomerates,
international institutions, and governments complicit with neoliberalism) aim at increasing
their profits by applying interventionist and neocolonial policies.
War, military occupations, free-trade neoliberal treaties and “austerity measures” are
expressed in economic packages that privatise the common good and public services, cut
wages and rights, increase unemployment, overload women's care work and destroys
nature.
Such policies strike the richer countries of the [global] North harder and are increasing
migration, forced displacement, evictions, debt and social inequalities such as in Greece,
Cyprus, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and the Spanish state.
They reinforce conservatism and the control over women´s bodies and lives. In addition,
they seek to impose”green economy” as a solution to the environmental and food crisis,
which not only exacerbates the problem, but leads to commodification, privatisation and
financialisation of life and nature.
We denounce the intensification of repression to people´s rebellions, the assassination of
the leadership of social movements, the criminalisation of our struggles and our proposals.
We assert that people must not continue to pay for this systemic crisis (...) This is why we,
social movements, struggle:
Against transnational corporations and the financial system (IMF, WB and WTO), which
are the main agents of the capitalist system, privatising life, public services and common
goods such as water, air, land, seeds and mineral resources, promoting wars and violations
of human rights. Transnational corporations reproduce extractionist practices endangering
life and nature, grabbing our lands and developing genetically modified seeds and food,
taking away the peoples’ right to food and destroying biodiversity.
We fight for the cancellation of illegitimate and odious debt which today is a global
instrument of domination, repression and economic and financial strangulation of people.
We reject free trade agreements that are imposed by States and transnational corporations
and we affirm that it is possible to build another kind of globalisation, made from and by
the people, based on solidarity and on freedom of movement for all the human beings.
For climate justice and food sovereignty, because we know that global climate change is a
product of the capitalist system of production, distribution and consumption. Transnational
corporations, international financial institutions and governments serving them do not want
to reduce greenhouse gases. We denounce “green economy” and refuse false solutions to
the climate crisis such as biofuels, genetically modified organisms and mechanisms of the
carbon market like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation), which ensnare impoverished peoples with false promises of progress while
privatising and commodifying the forests and territories where these peoples have been
living for thousands of years.
We defend the food sovereignty and support sustainable peasant agriculture which is the
true solution to the food and climate crises and includes access to land for all who work on
8
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http://occupywallst.org/tag/global%20solidarity/
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