Socio-politico-economic context - TEXT FOR DEBATE

The 8th International Meeting of the World March of Women will be held in November 2011. This is an important moment for us, not only to evaluate our 3rd International Action, but also to improve our work as an anti-capitalist, feminist, and grassroots movement. We need to construct a common analysis of the consequences of the capitalist model crisis, felt most strongly in countries considered to central. We also need to analyse the growing conservatism and militarisation around the world.

This document, written by the International Committee, aims to contribute information to the debates being carried out as part of the National Coordinating Bodies’ preparatory processes for the International Meeting. The basis of this document is an analysis of the capitalist, economic, financial, environmental and social reproduction crises, which have lead to an increase of inequalities and contradictions in a society marked by violence against women, as a permanent tool to control women’s bodies and lives. We suggest complementing this document with other analyses of the regional, national and local contexts. All contributions and comments, etc, are welcome. The International Secretariat will receive contributions to the text until the 11th September. We recognise that the political, socio-economic situation changes all the time and we stress that this is not and will not be a final document. We invite you to read it not only with WMW participant groups in your countries, but with other movements and organisations that share our vision and values.

The current situation can be analysed from different perspectives, which are not necessarily contradictory. The financial crisis, unemployment and debt levels in Northern countries opened up space for a questioning of the current model and neoliberal discourse, and for an increase in social mobilisations. Nevertheless, neoliberal policies are kept in place.  The same neoliberal “solutions” to the crisis prevail, from cutting public spending and attacking the rights of women workers, to maintaining levels of corporate greed, including financial business and military expenditure. Pressure is growing on “real assets”, such as land and real estate, resulting in landgrabbing of peasant, indigenous, and traditional lands, and the stalling of urban reform. Or is it the case that Southern countries benefit from increased commodities (raw materials) prices and the fact that their economies are more directed to internal markets?

Undisputable are the ultra-conservative sectors attacks on our rights – civil, sexual and reproductive – as women, through both public and political-electoral means. The mass media – controlled by large, often multi-national, companies or, in some countries, powerful families – supports and strengthens this offensive against women as well as the criminalisation of poverty and social struggles. So far, left-wing sectors were not able to effectively respond to these attacks.  

Despite the existence of several laws against gender violence, we have witnessed the intensification of violence against women, expressed through feminicides, despite the existence of diverse laws against gender-based violence. We have particularly noticed the increase of violence against women (and their families) who are active in social movements on every continent. This situation is also reflected in the rape and persecution of women, particularly in contexts of militarisation.

Crises, work, migration
The work done by women, in its multiple possible forms, is at the centre of the economic and market organisation of our societies in the capitalist, racist and patriarchal system. Women are to this day primarily responsible for care-work at home, in their communities or in the service sector, thus reproducing the model which has been historically designated to them by the capitalist and patriarchal society. Women are present in greater numbers than men in the kinds of work that sustain entire communities, such as agricultural and peasant production, artisan fishing or small-scale manufacture. They are also more active in economic production and sectors that depend on intensive labour-force within today’s globalised market, such as the dressmaking and shoe industries and agro-exportation.
 
One of the features of this systemic crisis is the crisis of the social reproduction model, based on the sexual division of labour, which attributes productive work (production of merchandise) to men, and reproductive work (caring for people) to women. Moreover, a hierarchy is established, in which the former is more important than the latter. This model subjects care-work, human relationships and the organisation of work and consumption to the rules of the market, which aim to increase profit through efficiency and effectiveness within the current neoliberal phase of capitalism. This is particularly evident in the privatisation of common goods, such as public health services, education and water distribution. Given the pre-planned weakening and non-existence of public and community care services (for children, the ill or elderly, etc), women find themselves working long hours without remuneration, individually fulfilling tasks that are historically invisible and without salaries.

This exploitation situation stimulates the migration of women, between countries of the Southern hemisphere and, principally, to countries in the North. In some cases, certain women from the North end up exploiting women migrants, in order to fulfil both their social reproduction and production responsibilities. This situation is worsened by governmental policies, company practices and organised crime in the trafficking of women for forced labour.

In many communities^[1], income from the Diaspora permits the daily survival of families and the improvement of local infrastructure, in situations where the State is totally absent. The governments of these countries of origin are interested in these incomes in order to lessen the internal pressure for jobs and services and to guarantee the financial resources needed to pay the debts and royalties of multinational companies. On the other hand, northern companies and governments are interested in receiving migrant workers because they accept precarious conditions and they are the first to be disposed of when the need decreases.  

Despite the crisis, unemployment, reductions in income and even the return of migrants to their country of origin, the volume of remittances sent home by men and women workers is still higher than public spending for development.  

Once again, women remain invisible within the debate around the crisis: male unemployment is highlighted, while the fact that women have only kept their jobs because their insertion in the labour market has always been based on less rights and lower wages is ignored. Full employment has rarely been an option for women. Official statistics do not take female unemployment into account. Furthermore, women’s unemployment is hidden through childcare and house keeping, in the exchange of services and in underpaid activities.

In general, the crisis is being used to justify the undermining of workers’ rights, the reduction of their salaries, and mass redundancies in the public sector, where there is a high concentration of women workers. Despite the protests and strikes in some countries and sectors, the trade unions aren’t managing to react sufficiently. In many countries, in addition to the pay cuts, there has been a rise in the prices of food and basic services, thus increasing poverty.  

In the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries work remuneration within the Gross National Product (GNP) continues to decrease in relation to the remuneration of capital. We have observed changes being made to pension and social security programs in those countries where they exist, as part of the structural changes that are taking place. These changes are having a larger impact on women, which were already discriminated by these very same systems that do not recognise social reproduction as work.  
Crisis and conservatism
Within the framework of the crisis, we also see the progress of an ultra-conservative approach that relegates this whole debate to second place, while at the same time heaping praise on patriarchal families and blaming women for society’s problems (including male unemployment). Xenophobia, racism, lesbophobia and homophobia are further elements of this way of thinking.

The religious conservative sectors – be they Catholic, Evangelist, Hindu or Muslim – continue their offensive against legitimate women’s rights or against their struggle for these rights. These groups not only exert pressure from the outside, but are also present in a very organised way within State power (legislative, executive and judiciary) and institutions. This is visible, for example, in the Christian attacks against reproductive and sexual rights, and in the Islamic offensive against the approval and implementation of family codes that recognise women as having equal rights to men.

We need a more in-depth analysis of the connections between this ultra-conservative offensive and the greater exploitation of women’s work. For example, the ways in which patriarchal family ideals are used to encourage unemployed men to believe that they have the right to control the intensity and remuneration of their wife’s work, or sexual harassment is used by men to control women’s work in sweatshops. Additionally, sexual violence is used to punish women that demand their rights and to spread terror.

Increasing alliances with conservative sectors, including those linked to religious fundamentalists, is one of the strategies in place to strengthen this capitalist and patriarchal model and the “solutions” the crises. In theory, “capitalist development” breaks family or clan ties so that each individual is free to sell their labour or to consume as they wish. The ideology of experimentation and of “the new” promotes the production of goods (many of which have no use and present health risks), the circulation of merchandise and profit rates. In reality, however, capitalism has always relied on the family to produce trained workers, whose basic needs are met thanks to women’s work. Thus, in moments of crisis, the training of the working classes is strengthened by an appeal to family values and to women as their guardians.  

It’s evident that democracy and basic rights are under attack all over the world, ranging from the selective functioning of the juridical systems (very slow when dealing with attacks to collective rights and very fast when dealing with the criminalisation of the poor, migrants or social struggles) to extreme situations such as the support of coups d’état (as in Honduras).

This ultra-conservative offensive makes use of the ownership and control over the mass media to carry out an ideological war, with the sole goal of distracting and deviating people’s attention from structural issues, as well as imposing their analyses and “solutions” to the crisis. In addition, women are used as public spokespersons for political conservatism: just as Margaret Thatcher was the expression of neoliberalism and the weakening of union organisation in 1980, and Sarah Palin and Marine Le Pen^[2] stand out as public expressions of a “modern” fascism. We must struggle against them, to prevent them from strengthening their positions.   

Climate change and environmental and energetic crisis
With regards to the climate debate, environmental, indigenous and peasant movements have successfully helped other movements and sectors of society to understand that the crisis promotes a conflicting relationship between humans and companies and the environment. Joint actions have consequently been organised against false solutions to climate change.

Solutions to the environmental crisis put forward by green capitalism include creating carbon credit markets and replacing vehicles of personal use, home appliances or inefficient products with models that use renewable energy. The promotion of this so called ‘clean energy’, such as agrofuels, results in the expansion of monoculture, landgrabbing, the contamination of nature through the use of genetically modified seeds and the intensive use of chemicals, without respecting communities’ rights. Nuclear energy is also considered “clean“ by green capitalism. In general terms, it is clear that poorer or “less developed” regions (from the point of view of the capitalist model) become energy-supply areas for richer industrialized regions. This is valid for both poor and rich countries, such as Japan, where the earthquake and tsunami of March 11th, 2011, revealed to the world the economic inequalities between the region of the Fukushima nuclear power plant and the rest of the country. In many other countries, power plants are being installed in native peoples’ or peasants’ territories, with the purpose of serving large industrial centres and not the communities around them.

Despite their discourses and propaganda about environmental responsibility, the large mining and petroleum transnational corporations maintain their projects that lead to the destruction of large areas of land and to the intensive use and contamination of water. Moreover, they are often involved in slave labour and armed conflicts.

The huge projects and social disasters that worsen natural events like earthquakes, torrential rains, and droughts, provoke the displacement of populations and the re-occupation of territories by large companies or foreign governments; a process known as landgrabbing. Similar processes are underway in urban areas for the same reasons or due to large international sporting events, as a result of tourism and the entertainment industry or purely for the sake of speculation purposes.  

There are many similarities between companies’ strategies and the discourse of appropriation / domination of nature, territories and women’s bodies. Likewise, there are parallels between the use of the environment and of women’s time; their exploitation is considered inexhaustible and both are used as a variable easily and continuously adjusted so as to maintain profits immune to the cyclic crises of capitalism.  

We need to strengthen our political action in order to reclaim not only women’s territory - their body and their land - but also water, biodiversity and the culture of those people living in these territories for generations.

The market’s offensive on the environment is presented as a solution to many elements of the current crisis: for example the new forms of monetary circulation – such as the carbon credit market – that are not linked in any way to the real production of goods and services, or the “right” to pollute that is negotiated on the stock market. The re-granting of legitimacy to United Nations (UN) negotiation processes is another example, as seen in the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Convention on Climate Change and the upcoming Rio+20 Conference, both reminiscent of World Trade Organisation (WTO) conferences. They also allow for a renewed legitimisation of the World Bank, known for financing large projects that cause environmental devastation, and now responsible for managing the climate fund.

In this context, there are new attempts to instrumentalise women. REDD (Reducing Emissions from Degradation and Forest Degradation) is a mechanism that takes over forest control, dismissing the original peoples who have lived there for generations and transferring the power to governments, private companies and NGOs for their own use. In return, women are promised resources (possibly from the carbon market) just as they have been promised patents for traditional knowledge during past WTO negotiations. Indigenous and peasants’ organisations strongly criticise this mechanism, but some NGOs that work with women spread ostensive propaganda claiming that REDD is an “opportunity for women”, as if to say that women would benefit from the resources that would supposedly be transferred to their communities.

The illusion that the climate change market will provide many resources, with funding from companies, creates considerable confusion among social organisations, especially against the backdrop of cuts in public support for development and fundraising by social movements in the North.

Debt and free trade
The increase of poverty and national dependency as a consequence of structural adjustment programmes and, more recently, the financial crisis, reveal the weakness of neoliberal strategies. Even so, the basic pillars of this strategy – indebtedness and free trade – continue to operate and are even spreading further.

The increase of family indebtedness, even within the context of high unemployment levels and low wages, continues to be used as a way of stimulating the consumer market without distributing wealth.

Governments go into debt by relying on future growth as a guarantee. In addition to the repayment of this debt imposed upon future generations, much of this credit is used to build the necessary infrastructure for large transnational companies that are present in the country. In moments of debt crises, the dominant discourse demands the payment of these debts with cuts in public services.  

Debt relief negotiations for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) continue to demand the privatisation of companies, or national laws that benefit the interests of transnational companies.

The World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) continue to impose negotiation conditions, even though their legitimacy does not carry the same weight as it did in the 1980’s. Nowadays countries resort more easily to cash loans or product exchange, or even to direct investments from China.

As for the opening of markets and foreign investments, we observe two strategies in place: the ongoing bilateral treaty negotiations between countries or sub-regions directly with the United States and/or the European Union, and the resumption of negotiations to conclude the WTO Doha round.  Although halted in 2005, governments present at the ministerial meeting of November 2009 in Geneva (Switzerland) committed themselves to the Doha Round. Both in bilateral treaties and at the WTO, the predominance of market rules now extends beyond the “free circulation of goods” to the free circulation of services, such as access to health, education, and water, which were not considered tradable goods in the past.

Given the illegitimacy of multilateral financial institutions and the deadlock reached by neoliberal economical integration projects, social movements – especially in the Americas – have been analysing alternative proposals for regional integration based on solidarity, complementarity and the reduction of inequalities, and have been discussing these with the region’s governments.  Other forms of financial integration, such as the Bank of the South, have been put forward.

On the other hand, and against a backdrop of widespread crisis, rich countries have been promoting the G-20 since the end of 2008 as a way to regain and / or speed up trade negotiations in a non-transparent and undemocratic form. The G-20 is the meeting of the 20 richest countries in the world (the G-8 and the “emerging” countries such a Brazil, China, India and South Africa), with the countries representing two thirds of the world's population and of trade and over 90% of gross world product. Thanks to the resources made available, particularly by emerging countries in the G-20, the IMF and the World Bank have gained new momentum, thus imposing once again their austerity policies in countries of both the Northern and the Southern hemisphere. For instance, in emergency situations such as the one in Haiti, the WB (rather than the Bank of the South) coordinated resources destined to rebuild the country, with little autonomy granted to the national government and a complete absence of civil society. Furthermore, the G-20 is heading towards a new model of world economical and financial governance, for today it defines WB guidelines and important issues of the United Nations (UN) agenda.

Increase in militarization
As a way of activating the economy in a period of crisis, there has been a rise in government spending on security and the purchase of arms in many countries, together with increased militarisation to strengthen control over territories (including water, agricultural land, mineral resources and biodiversity).

In spite of the economic crisis and the cut in government spending, military expenditure keeps on increasing. Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize winner, proposed the highest military budget ever for 2011 – 708 billion dollars, a 7.1% increase in comparison to 2010. In the year 2008, the United States was responsible for 41.5% of worldwide military expenditure, followed by China, responsible for 5.8%.

As well as the increase in military expenditure, the current global context is characterised by the presence of Private Military Companies – an industry that is responsible for the circulation of billions of dollars every year – and of the militarisation of people’s daily lives. Examples include the militarisation of humanitarian aid in Haiti, and so-called public security in poor urban areas.

The discourses of “pacifying”, democratizing or assuring women’s rights in specific countries is used by many countries in the North to justify military occupations, as was the case in Afghanistan or Iraq, and now in Libya. These discourses hide the North’s real interests in controlling territories and their natural and human resources. The hypocrisy of the Western rhetoric around the defence of democracy and women’s rights is revealed through the death of civilians – mostly women and children – and the destruction of basic infrastructure, such as access to water and housing.

To add insult to injury, foreign attacks and military occupations lead to a strengthening of authoritarian structures in local communities, which react to the threat by imposing radical values and even the deprivation of individual freedoms. On a daily basis, women are confronted with the need to compromise between respect for traditional rules that provide their communities with cohesion, on the one hand, and the exercise of – or desire to exercise – individual freedom, on the other. As a consequence of each racist, xenophobic offensive, or of foreign occupations, women experience less and less room for manoeuvre. In addition, in conflict situations, armed groups co-opt community members and disseminate mistrust. Young women are often used as informants, drawn in through strategies that include romantic relationships with soldiers, etc.

As already witnessed in global financial governance, there is also a restructuring in the military context. In November 2010, NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an alliance that brings together the United States and 27 other European countries (corresponding to 75% of the global military budget), adopted a new "strategic concept": that of self-named guardian of peace and international order, not only in the northern hemisphere but also from a global perspective. In order to fulfil this role, its members often manipulate decision-making procedures in the UN Security Council. Through the rhetoric around the protection of civilian lives, NATO looks out for its own interests, as in Libya, and yet ignores civilians’ rights when of no interest to them as, for example, in the Palestinian slaughter executed by Israel.

On the other hand, there is growing resistance to the presence of United States military bases on foreign soil: for example, Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president, fulfilled his campaign promise not to renovate the Manta Air Base agreement with the US, which forced the US to stop its use of the air base from September 2009 onwards. There are an estimated 800 to 900 military bases with the presence of U.S. troops around the world. However, when a country or community wins the struggle to close a base or expel foreign troops, these military personnel and installations move to another region or country.

In most of the diverse armed conflicts taking place worldwide today, women’s bodies are used as a weapon and spoils of war. Through a series of Security Council resolutions, the United Nations formally acknowledges this fact.

Resolution 1325 was adopted in 2000, and, since then, other resolutions have dealt with the issue of violence against women in war situations. These resolutions further acknowledge women’s participation in conflict resolution, in defining priorities to rebuild the country, and in developing post-conflict social relations. The goal is to achieve a higher participation of women, which could possibly strengthen community reconciliation processes and prioritise women’s recommendations for budgets and for the reorganisation of economic and social life. However, it has so far been reduced to the goal of a higher participation of women in the so-called peace and stabilisation operations: currently women represent 8% of this contingent; the goal for 2014 is to increase it to 20%.

We need to relate the increased participation of women in negotiation processes to the affirmation of a political agenda that confronts the causes of conflict and also of attacks on human rights and women’s integrity. As regards the issue of militarization, the real challenge today lies in building a women’s agenda, which expresses the voices and experiences of grassroots women as well as feminist, anti-capitalist views.
 
The United Nations currently carries out 27 operations around the world, 16 of which are missions.  The WMW is present in the form of a National Coordinating Body or contact group in countries with a UN military presence such as Haiti, Western Sahara, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Cyprus, and India/Pakistan. Women in these countries express many concerns regarding the presence of these missions, especially because when become permanent. Local populations see them as occupation troops that provoke a distortion in the local economy due to the high dollar wages of their employees and military personnel, while creating a sexual exploitation network of girls and women around them. Some WMW activists have argued that by working to mainstream gender in the military policy, we end up militarising the gender policy. We have realised that this discussion cannot be reduced to how to guarantee gender mainstreaming in United Nations security policy without questioning the policy itself.

The WMW in this scenario: resisting and affirming our alternatives
In 2010, we carried out 3rd International Action, mobilising thousands of women from 75 countries around our four Action Areas: Women’s work (women’s economic autonomy); the Common good and public services; Peace and demilitarisation; Violence against women. Through these actions, we have denounced the false solutions to the crisis, that only aggravate the capitalist, patriarchal, and racist model, and we’ve sought to highlight  bottom-up alternatives.

Throughout the last three years, we’ve moved forward in the consolidation of our identity through reflection and the organisation of our commitments and demands in each one of these Action Areas (see http://www.marchemondiale.org/actions/2010action/text/en). In the context of the systemic crisis, the Action Areas were especially useful in organising our criticism of the model as the WMW, both for our grassroots activists and as part of our dialogue with allies and society in general. The Action Areas have concretely translated our struggle against poverty and violence against women, and they were references for National Coordinating Bodies in the construction of their national platforms.

Nonetheless, we have evaluated that we still need to work on interconnecting the four Action Areas and rescuing the Women’s Global Charter for Humanity, in order to construct and strengthen the principles that connect our struggles. Our permanent challenge is how to develop analyses and actions that give shape to alternative ways of organising production and reproduction. This further reinforces the need to continuously put down roots and build the World March of Women as a permanent movement.

The 2011 – 2012 period must be one of resistance and intense struggle to avoid losing ground on the rights and living conditions of peoples. Revolutions in Arab countries and Africa show that the deterioration of people’s living conditions can be followed by actions and demonstrations, leading in many cases to the collapse of governments historically aligned with the exclusionary policies of rich countries. In all these processes women participate actively, being equally imprisoned or killed in defence of real democracy. We must be vigilant so that our presence is also ensured during the transition moment, and that such victories are not reversed in actions that increase the control and violence against women.

Now more than ever, we must carry out political training and reflection activities to counter the dissemination of ultra-conservative ideologies, while innovating the way we organise and support our movement.  

Challenges in building the WMW as a movement

Connecting reflection and common action at various levels (local, regional, international)
Over the last few years, we have realised that we cannot work with the Action Areas in a stagnant, fragmented way. If we are to achieve our goal of building a feminist movement that permanently mobilises large numbers of women worldwide, we have to continuously seek interconnections between them. In order to do this we have to observe and face the changes in the politico-socio-economic context, so that the demands that we’ve agreed upon at an international level continue to make an impact. Furthermore, we have to constantly establish connections between the global context and our struggles and issues at a national level, and we must work at different levels with a common strategy. In this way, our context analysis, demands and commitments are not separated from the construction of the WMW as a movement and its resulting challenges.

In 2010, women from many different countries incorporated the struggle for demilitarisation into their actions, and not only those from countries in situations of open armed conflict. Using these struggles as a framework, we began connecting the causes and consequences of conflicts, which are in turn related to our other Action Areas, such as the control and exploitation of women’s bodies and work, of their territories and of the environment.  

Developing analyses and political training
Whilst preparing and carrying out the 2010 International Action, NCBs and Participating Groups worked actively with the Action Area documents, organising workshops and agreeing on demands at national levels. In doing so, they recognised the importance of highlighting the interconnections between the Action Areas in order to move forward with the recovery of feminist thinking, women’s concrete experiences, and the current context. We have to continuously work on new syntheses that express the WMW’s vision in a simpler and stronger way.

From now on, our priority is to turn our methodology into action, not only in terms of training, but also in expressing women’s concrete experiences, thus investing in a common vision that is present in written documents, and more so in actions and activities of the National Coordinating Bodies.

We must keep up our strategic debates on the topics around which different perceptions coexist within the WMW, such as prostitution, lesbian rights, and abortion. We should additionally affirm our counter-hegemonic views – for example our conception of sexist violence as a tool of control over women’s bodies, lives and sexuality – even though not all NCBs have taken these views on as their own.

Consolidating the WMW as a permanent movement at local, regional and international levels
Now that the 2010 International Action is over, National Coordinating Bodies need to establish a permanent functioning dynamic and understand the WMW as a permanent movement – capable of making an impact on local and national contexts – and not only as an event that takes place every five years (the period between International Actions).

For this goal to become a reality, we need to deepen the exchanges at organisational level and in relation to the contents of our struggles, between the WMW from different countries, on an inter-continental or an inter-regional scale. We should also need to strengthen thematic networking and exchanges, for example between the struggle for the rights of domestic and migrant workers being carried out in India, the US and South Africa, or the connection among countries in conflict.

Finally, we need to construct the March where we are not yet present, especially in countries and communities that live under Islamic laws, but also in countries economically rich, such as Russia and China.

Formalising functioning agreements
Within the WMW, very different political organisational cultures coexist, from informal groups to more institutionalised associations. The idea of having registered functioning agreements always raises concerns: are we becoming too bureaucratic, or are we creating traps for ourselves? The existent Rules and Bylaws are insufficient for the current moment of the WMW and we need to update our ideas of what is a National Coordinating Body, what responsibilities delegates have at the International Meetings and what the role of the International Committee is, among other issues. Another goal is to organise the process of transferring the International Secretariat from Brazil to another country without creating gaps and ensuring that the WMW keeps functioning as an international movement.

Strengthening youth, indigenous, and immigrant participation
We recognise that one of our strong points is the diversity of political cultures and experiences among WMW activists and our capacity to reach agreements. Yet we acknowledge important absences in some countries. We also recognise the ongoing challenge to share responsibilities at an international level with young, immigrant and indigenous women and we have consequently developed some mechanisms to tackle this challenge. For example, we invite at least one young woman per country delegation to the International Meetings and we take part in activities organised by indigenous women while inviting them to take part in ours. Nevertheless, we need to move forward, not just institutionally, but in how we include the discussion around racism / colonialism in our analyses or how we develop actions that respond to urgent issues in young women’s lives, such as precarious employment, violence and commodification.  

Developing our alliances policy at different levels
We build alliances because it is not possible to eliminate the causes of poverty and of violence against women without a deep political, economic, and social transformation. We need a large, encompassing movement of movements, one that changes the correlation of power that sustains the capitalist, colonialist, patriarchal, and racist order.

The systemic crisis has revealed to an even greater extent the need to create and / or maintain common spaces among different social movements: of strategic analysis, the development of alternatives and the organisation of common actions and solutions. Given the fragmentation of spaces such as campaigns, thematic networks and forums, we increasingly believe in the Social Movements Assembly as a priority space for reflection and common action for movements of the geopolitical South and North.

Another priority for the WMW is the ongoing follow-up of the World Social Forum process. We are part of the International Council and its commissions, as well as its Liaison Group. Furthermore, with the support of NCBs and regional work groups, we have organised activities at national and regional Social Forums and at the World Social Forum in Senegal in January 2011.

Since the Forum for Food Sovereignty (Nyeleni), we have established a close alliance with Via Campesina and Friends of the Earth International around this struggle, associating the principle of food sovereignty to problems that women face daily in different countries, as well as seeking to establish or deepen the connections between rural and urban women. At all levels of our relationship with Via Campesina, we are called upon to engage and support them as a movement so that the Campaign to end violence against rural women becomes a reality.

In our 3rd International Action Closing Event in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the debates were enriched by the presence and contributions of women’s delegations from the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). It is our hope that these alliances will help deepen our work in those areas we have in common.

The fact that we operate as an alert network is another increasingly important aspect of our alliances policy, given the criminalisation of social movements throughout the world and the threats of coup d’état.  

Nonetheless, we still face the challenge of rooting this policy of alliances locally and regionally, and of involving more WMW activists from different countries and regions to subsequently follow-up.

Thinking communication strategically
Within the WMW we have set ourselves the challenge to deepen our vision of strategic communication (rather than only instrumental). This includes establishing and improving internal and external communication channels as well as our relations with commercial media and, especially, with community media (newsletters, news websites and radio and TV programmes produced by our organisations and allies). Given the role of mass media in the definition of the public agenda for debate (what issues and how they should be discussed), we have to intensify our discussion around the democratisation of the media. We should strengthen our strategy to promote the discussion of ideas within different communication spaces. As part of this strategy, the WMW actively takes part in shared communication initiatives with other movements (such as Minga Informativa de los Movimientos Sociales in Latin America).

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Notas
(1) Such as Mali, Peru and Ecuador
(2) Sarah Palin was vice-presidential candidate for the United States in 2008 for the Republican Party and is the main public figure of the “Tea Party”, a conservative, anti-state political movement.   Marine Le Pen is president of the National Front, the extreme right party in France.