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Forums > eife@forums.alliance21.org
Alliance
21: Making Another World Possible |
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| The first three parts : - Evaluation and Vision of the Future
- The second stage of the Alliance :
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THE SECOND STAGE OF THE ALLIANCE
First Contribution to a Collective Thinking ProcessB/ Present Assets and Weaknesses of the Alliance As It Faces the Changing Challenges of the World
a) The need to build a world civil society that is capable of designing and steering vast mutations is newly confirmed every day. The existence, success, and limits of the Social Forums are a good demonstration of this. The construction of an Òanti-globalization coalitionÓ has shown the latterÕs ability to resist. Nonetheless, this resistance is likely to fail if it does not turn into an ÒAlliance for another globalization.Ó However, an ÒantiÓ coalition and a ÒproÓ Alliance do not respond to the same logic. It is easier to face a common challenge together than to build credible alternatives jointly. More than ever the Òalliance projectÓÑwith all that it implies in terms of duration in its work, openness to diversity, confrontation of different points of view, the elaboration of common proposals and implementation strategiesÑis indispensable. In my view, the Alliance is more relevant today, has a greater vision, and is more necessary than ever. The stubbornness with which we have defended these ideas year after year, the thinking capital that we have accumulated, our strong presence in world forums to contribute proposals and to help them to be elaborated gives the Alliance an ever greater moral credit. Whatever its limits and contradictions, this endeavor is unique in the world. b) The Charter of Human Responsibilities, given the way in which it has been elaborated and its discussion in the different Socioprofessional Networks, can become a reference. There can be no governance without a common ethical reference. The interdependence among societies and with the biosphere has gradually brought about awareness of the larger definition of responsibility on which the Charter has been built. c) The first stage of the Alliance has made it possible to achieve a true prototype, a scale model for dialogue within a world society. The World Citizens Assembly was its symbol, both through the diversity of its participants and through its progress, which was designed as an itinerary, a shortcut in the necessary dialogue within every socioprofessional sphere, among different spheres, among the regions of the world, and among the challenges. This prototype has made it possible, as for the vocation of any prototype, to explore all the limitations of such a dialogue and to test appropriate answers. This prototype now makes it possible to consider a change of scale. d) The sixty Proposal Papers and the work of the World Citizens Assembly have made it possible to determine the main lines and the priorities of an Agenda for the Twenty-first Century, which expresses the major changes that need to be made. The summarization of these sixty Papers made it possible to test methodological tools. The deliberation of the Papers by all the Allies is making it possible to test others. e) The socioprofessional approach allowed in 2000-2001 a considerable enlargement of the social and professional diversity of our approaches with the constitution of workgroups f)made up of the military, jurists, union activists, company managers, engineers, financiers, shareholders, local elected officials, civil servants, etc., beyond that which had thus far constituted the AllianceÕs center of gravity. The idea of a process organized to last a long time, providing a stable work protocol and clear deadlines without being institutionalized, seems more familiar today that it was in 1994. The Web site itself has been developed according to a similar logic. The Continental and World Social Forums share the same intuitions on a number of points. The need to set up, for this type of Ònew collective being,Ó a new framework of thinking and governance, different from the usual political, union, or organization references, has begun to appear more clearly. g) The considerable challenge of setting up information systems in several languages among the Allies and with the outside world has been met. We have both the appropriate technical tools (organization of the Web site, electronic forums, remotely managed data bases) and a significant learning capacity: most these tools have been perfected several times and have been accompanied by human skills that can transfer this know-how. The mapping team mobilized for the third World Social Forum and the team of public writers (DPH) mobilized at the World Citizens Assembly are illustrations of this. h) The Call for Initiatives, launched by the FPH in the spring of 2002 to help those who wished to begin to write Òthe blank pageÓ of the second stage of the Alliance, was amply successful. Answers to the Call have covered the different facets of the Alliance: circulation and transposition of the Charter of Human Responsibilities, organization of Regional or National Citizens Assemblies, organization of information systems to network the innovations, development of the Socioprofessional Networks, further elaboration of the thematic proposals. These answers have also shown that the early Allies are aware of the need to no longer count mainly on resources from the FPH. They have also made it possible to discover new partners. i) Close to 40% of the participants of the World Assembly answered the assessment questionnaires on Lille, even though for a lot of them that was their first contact with the Alliance. It may therefore be possible to maintain in the long run the social, professional, and cultural diversity of the world that the Assembly symbolized, if there is constant effort in that direction. The idea of a World Parliament of Citizens in 2010 has raised a lot of interest and appears more Utopian to me, unless discussion begins now on designing the methods for it. j) The present world crisis, triggered by George W. BushÕs unilateralism, demonstrates the emergency of setting up a form of legitimate, democratic, and efficient global governance, which the official governments of the world cannot even conceive. Under these conditions, the perspectives that we have begun to outline are particularly relevant today: although a world democratic government may not be for tomorrow, the dialogue, consultation, proposals, assessment, and mediation of an organized world civil society is irreplaceable.
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