We invite local, national, and international inhabitants’ organisations, networks, and citizens, who are involved in the livability of the city and are struggling for rights related to habitat, to participate in the second Urban Social Forum (USF) in Naples, Italy, September 3-7, 2012, which will be held as an alternative to UN-Habitat’s World Urban Forum (WUF) 6.

We launch this call, based on the shared principles of the World Social Forum (WSF), convinced on the necessity to continue to develop successful convergences at local, national and international levels, such as: the World Assembly of Inhabitants (Mexico City, 2000), World Social Forum 1 (Porto Alegre, 2001), Urban Social Forum 1 (Rio de Janeiro, 2010), World Assembly of Inhabitants and the Popular Neighbourhood Forum (Dakar, 2011), World Days for the Right to Habitat (October 2011), the People’s Summit (Rio de Janeiro, 2012), and the upcoming World Assembly of Inhabitants during the World Social Forum in 2013.

The second Urban Social Forum in Naples will be held in a beautiful territory rich with resources, however severly damaged, which is an additional reason to build this inclusive space together. Naples will represent another milestone in the consolidation of dialogue and alliances to reach a consensus on a platform and program for common action between urban and rural inhabitant movements and all those organizations, networks and institutions that fight for the rights to housing, land, common goods, and to the city. These rights can only be protected by building more just, democratic and sustainable territories and by defending inhabitants against attacks steming from the crisis caused by neoliberal globalization.

Read more and signe the call here

The World Water Forum Marseille 2012, Istanbul 2009, Mexico 2006, Kyoto 2003, The Hague 2000, Marrakech 1997: Veolia… Suez… Saur… Public Private Partnerships… Price of Scarcity… Cost Recovery… Suez… Veolia… Big Dams… Desalination… Making the Users Pay… Bechtel… Veolia… Water is a Commodity…

Have you had enough of hearing the same arguments again and again ? Have you had enough of hearing the same voices, those of multinationals and the most powerful states again and again ?

Help us let other voices be heard ! Those of the peoples, those of public management, those of the right to water and democracy, those of the environmental movement, those of associations, those of women… Support FAME, the Alternative World Water Forum in Marseille in 2012 !

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We, farmers organizations, non-governmental organizations, religious organizations, unions and other social movements, gathered in Dakar for the World Social Forum 2011:

Considering that small and family farming, which represent most of the world’s farmers, are best placed to:

* meet their dietary needs and those of populations, ensuring food security and sovereignty of countries,

* provide employment to rural populations and maintain economic life in rural areas, key to a balanced territorial development,

* produce with respect to the environment and to the conservation of natural resources for future generations;

Considering that recent massive land grabs targeting tens of millions of acres for the benefit of private interests or third states - whether for reasons of food, energy, mining, environment, tourism, speculation or geopolitics - violate human rights by depriving local, indigenous, peasants, pastoralists and fisher communities of their livelihoods, by restricting their access to natural resources or by removing their freedom to produce as they wish, and exacerbate the inequalities of women in access and control of land;

Considering that investors and complicit governments threaten the right to food of rural populations, that they condemned them to suffer rampant unemployment and rural exodus, that they exacerbate poverty and conflicts and contribute to the loss ofagricultural knowledge and skills and cultural identities ;

Considering also that the land and the respect of human rights are firstly under the jurisdiction of national parliaments and governments, and they bear the greatest share of responsibility for these land grabs;

We call on parliaments and national governments to immediately cease all massive land grabs current or future and return the plundered land. We order the government to stop oppressing and criminalizing the movements of struggle for land and to releaseactivists detained. We demand that national governments implement an effective framework for the recognition and regulation of land rights for users through consultation with all stakeholders. This requires putting an end to corruption and cronyism, which invalidates any attempt of shared land management.

 We demand that governments, the Regional Unions of States, FAO and other national and international institutions immediately implement the commitments that were made at the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) of 2006, namely securing land rights of users, the revival of agrarian reform process based on a fair access to natural resources and rural development for the welfare of all. We ask that the elaboration process of the FAO Guidelines on Governance of Land and Natural Resources be strengthened, and that they are based on Human Rights as defined in the various charters and covenants - these rights being effective only if binding legal instruments are implemented at the national and international level to impose on the states compliance with their obligations. Moreover, each state has to be held responsible for the impact of its policies or activities of its companies in the countries targeted by the investments. Similarly, we must reaffirm the supremacy of Human Rights over international trade and finance regimes, which are sources of speculation on natural resources and agricultural goods.

 Meanwhile, we urge the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) to definitively reject the World Bank principles for responsible agricultural investment (RAI), which are illegitimate and inadequate to address the phenomenon, and to include the commitments of the ICARRD as well as the conclusions of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) in its Global Framework for Action.

 We demand that states, regional organizations and international institutions guarantee people’s right to land and support family farming and agro-ecology. Appropriate agricultural policies should consider all different types of producers (indigenous peoples, pastoralists, artisanal fishermen, peasants, agrarian reform beneficiaries) and answer specifically to the needs of women and youth.

 Finally, we invite people and civil society organisations everywhere to support - by all human, media, legal, financial or popular means possible - all those who fight against land grabs and to put pressure on national governments and international institutions to fulfil their obligations towards the rights of people.

We all have a duty to resist and to support the people who are fighting for their dignity!

Read explanatory note and sign sign on on-line... The appeal will be open for the endorsement until 15 June 2011.

The Dakar Appeal, together with the names of organisations endorsing it, will be presented during the mobilizations against the G20 Agriculture Ministers’ meeting in Paris on 22-23 June.

The financial crisis is a systemic crisis that emerges in the context of global crises (climate, food, energy, social…) and of a new balance of power. It results from 30 years of transfer of income from labour towards capital. This tendency should be reversed. This crisis is the consequence of a capitalist system of production based on laissez-faire and fed by short term accumulation of profits by a minority, unequal redistribution of wealth, an unfair trade system, the perpetration and accumulation of irresponsible, ecological and illegitimate debt, natural resource plunder and the privatization of public services. This crisis affects the whole humanity, first of all the most vulnerable (workers, jobless, farmers, migrants, women…) and Southern countries, which are the victims of a crisis for which they are not at all responsible.

• Call for the signature of NGOs, trade unions and social movements Belem, February the 1st of 2009 : http://www.choike.org/campaigns