PHM-Exch> 8th World Social Forum on Health and Social Security

[Claudio Schuftan]

Invitation to the organisation and participation of

*8th World Social Forum on Health and Social Security*



*Democracy, Peace and Development:*

*The Roles of Social and Environmental Justice*



*Campus of the National University of Colombia – Bogotá*

*26 to 28 June 2019*



*INTRODUCTION*

The World Social Forum on Health and Social Security was created in the
context of the movement around the World Social Forum since 2002. It was a
thematic forum, initially focussed on health. Since 2011 however it fully
integrates the topics of social security and broader social protection,
including the right to civil and political security, as well as social and
economic security. A dialogue was developed on a broad range of rights,
such as the right to work, the right to a decent job and wage, to housing,
water, public security, a healthy environment, pensions, health, education,
justice, food and nutrition… in other words the whole interdependent range
of rights articulated within the global and collective right to development.

The shaping of the conceptual floor of our work relates *sustainable and
multidimensional development *with social and environmental justice through
production and the distribution of wealth, stopping the appropriation of
productivity by financial capital, debt and wage constraints. *Social
protection with a redistribution of the accumulated wealth *should be
financed with progressive taxes, the cancellation of debts and citizens’
audits. Within this triangle one can define an integrated vision of the
complex processes to be considered and transformed, in order to develop an
alternative hegemony to the current dominant financial and speculative
capital and to rapid destruction of the environment and the labour force.
Inequalities continue to grow while social protection is failing. The
redistribution of wealth with public and universal social protection
systems is the main reference for the struggles for equality that are
historically promoted by the WSFHSS.

This is the reason why we organized in Brasilia, Brazil, in December 2010,
the First World Conference on the Development of Universal Social Security
Systems.

The objective of the Conference was to give visibility to the option of
universal systems as a sustainable alternative for responding to the needs
derived from human and social rights, opposed to the hegemonic models of
fragmentation and breakdown of health insurance and private pensions. At
the end of the Conference, it was decided to promote a Second World
Conference as well as regional conferences in order to examine development
strategies for universal systems in the context of each country and region.
Transition processes towards universality of rights in post-colonial
societies, economically fragile countries with structural inequalities and
low-intensity democracies, are necessarily very complex contexts to
understand and to transform.

>From the lessons we learned in the First World Conference we decided to
work on three strategic lines:

1.     Examine the transition towards universal systems of social
protection in countries with emerging economies. This research was
implemented in cooperation with UNRISD – UN Research Institute on Social
Development – in Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, South Africa, Thailand,
Indonesia, India, China and Russia. It includes an important conceptual and
methodological contribution for research on the complexities of transitions
towards universalism.

2.     Develop agreements for the promotion of regional conferences and the
Second World Conference in 2013. Unfortunately, it was not possible yet to
develop this initiative, but a process is ongoing to organize conferences
or world/regional social forums on health and social security ( the VIII
Wortld Forum in Colombia, preparatory national foruns at other South
American countries including Brasil, the Mediterranean Region) in 2019.

3.     Meet the lack of knowledge, training and political education
concerning universal social protection in the process of shaping radical
democratic societies, aspiring to be radically equalitarian.

The experience in Latin America and Northern Africa, more particularly the
space created in Colombia, Paraguay and Morocco, allowed to develop a
dialogue between political and social actors that work in different sectors
for the rights and needs of citizens, though mostly in separate ways and
branches of social protection. The proposal of the created universal rights
police laboratories is to give training for action, developing contents and
strategies for a process that is adequate in terms of time and space in a
given historical period.



In March 2018 we organized the 7th World Social Forum on Health and Social
Security in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. We discussed our critical
appropriation of the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 and how to work
with the complex system of rights in the context of the collective right to
development. We critically looked at the narratives on poverty and the
targeted social policies, fragmented insurances, financialisation of all
social policies within an economic system that concentrates wealth,
enhances the precariousness of labour and destroys natural resources.

In order to deepen these debates and develop the necessary struggles, we
think it is necessary to give a new dynamic to the World Social Forum on
Health and Social Security with the organisation of the 8th WSFHSS from 26
to 28 June 2019 at the Campus of the Colombia National University - UNAC in
the City of Bogotá, Colombia, and the First Regional Forum of the
Mediterranean in Morocco September 2019, with social movements of Northern
Africa and Southern Europe.  Preparatory national  events are taking place
in Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador,Colombia and Brazil, as well as in Africa and
Asia.

In this context, we want to give a new dynamic to the multilingual
electronic platform of the WSFHSS, in order to support the network of
laboratories on universal public policies and the observatory of social
conflicts around social protections. We also want to give support to
initiatives for national and regional laboratories in order to give more
effectiveness to our allies who want to take the opportunities of the
conflicts around the hegemonic legitimation and want to develop alternative
hegemonies.



*The VIII World Social Forum on Health and Social Security*

The central topic of the 8th Forum will be *DEMOCRACY, PEACE AND THE RIGHT
TO DEVELOPMENT: THE ROLES OF SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE*. In this
context the discussion on universal social protection will take a strategic
dimension of resistance to the loss of acquired rights. It also will look
at the challenge of the transition towards an economic system that is able
to sustain a project of universalisation, equality and comprehensiveness of
human, social and environmental rights.

The methodology of the 8th Forum will imply, for the first day, a
conceptual questioning of the topics in our central theme. It will allow to
identify the topics that need to be examined in a dynamic of the
laboratories on public policies the following days. In the Closing Plenary
these different topics will be articulated in a comprehensive and strategic
research and training agenda for political actions to be developed in
2019-2020.

In this same perspective, we will organize the First Regional Forum of the
Mediterranean, looking for regional dialogues on democracy, the right to
development, social and environmental justice. Social protection will be
valorised as a way of guaranteeing human and social rights and as
protection of environmental rights.

Because you work on topics that are linked to the central themes of the 8th
WSFHSS and the preparatory regional and national forums, you are invited to
co-organize these events and take part in the Organisational Committee that
will develop the programme, spread the information and mobilize for the
events, as well as help to search for material and human resources to make
it possible.

We also want to invite your organisation to confirm its commitment to the 8
th WSFHSS by being part of the WSFHSS International Council.

In order to make these commitments real, we kindly invite you to contact
Nancy Molina – njmolinaa at unal.edu.co, member of the VIII WSFHSS Organizing
committee in Colombia, or Armando de Negri Filho, armandodenegri at yahoo.com
Coordinator of the Executive Committee of WSFHSS, placed in Brazil.

Thanks for your attention.



*The objective of this 8th WSFHSS is to reflect on a general political
framework with the necessary dimensions in order to gear actions towards
transformative policies with solidarity, taking into account:*

*1.     **The elements in order to define a general political framework: *the
need to intensify democracy so that it contributes to social
transformation, to the emancipatory imperative of all policies, the
elimination of unjust inequalities, the common framework for a diversity of
policies, internationally and nationally, the role of the State and of
society (commons), the importance of all human, economic, social and
environmental rights, the reciprocity between different policies, war and
peace with the resolution of all old conflicts (land, food, capital,
labour, justice, production and redistribution of wealth, tackling the
roots of inequality).



The right to development can be the structural framework for human, social
and environmental rights at the individual and collective levels, whereby
development is defined as the use of wealth produced by nations and
societies with solidarity and equality.



*2.     **The economic dimension and its social and environmental impact*

a.    What kind of industrialisation?

b.    The contribution of feminism to the critical thinking on the economy
and the construction of alternatives

c.     The contribution of trade unionism, the new economic order, social
protection and the construction of alternatives

d.    The future of work and the alternatives in a context of new labour
markets, new technologies, precariousness and social protection.

e.    The political economy of wealth and poverty



*3.     **The ecological dimension*

a.    The contribution of environmentalism to the critical thinking on the
new economic order and the construction of alternatives

b.    The role of (de)growth and sustainability

c.     Environmental and social justice in the context of the rights of
nature

d.    The common goods of humankind – Biological diversity and the patent
system



*4.     **The social dimension*

a.    Culture and development

b.    Modernity and ‘Buen Vivir’

c.     Migration and forced displacements





*5.     **Sustainable development with social and environmental justice and
radical democracy*

a.    A new (global) social contract for peace

b.    The protection of emancipatory democratic processes – cyber-politics
and ideological domination

c.     The role of governments, parliaments and judges in the struggle for
development with social and environmental justice

d.    The role of social movements in the struggle for social and
environmental justice

e.    The role of regional integration processes and the configuration of
new economic and social blocs – the rights of people in the center of
regional (political) integration

f.      New alliances and coalitions in favour of the right to development

g.     The local urban and rural space, the role of cities, citizens and
their governments for shaping democracy and development

h.    Mapping the political opportunities: Alternative projects for power
and hegemonic alternatives



*6.     **What social policies do we need then?*

a.    Social policies at the service of humankind, democracy with social
and environmental justice and inclusive and sustainable development

b.    For an alternative narrative to poverty as the center of social
policies. Declaration on the illegality of poverty as strategy for the
universalisation of social protection.

c.     Universal social policies, progressive taxes, fiscal space and the
(re)distribution of wealth.

d.    Equity, health and social protection.

e.    Transnational political initiatives towards universal social
protection: Social Charter for the Americas, Global Charter for Social
Protection Rights, New Deal – UNCTAD, Social Protection Floors – ILO,
Sustainable Development Goals – UN.

*On the agenda making of the 8th WSFHSS*

We propose that between December 2018 and March 2019 we try to collectively
build the agenda and the programme for the 8th WSFHSS, starting from this
initial document. All interested collectives and actors can participate and
join the virtual meetings planned for the 4th Tuesday of January, February
and March 2019 (22 Jan, 26 Feb, 26 March) at 10 am Colombia time.

We invite all to organise preparatory activities in order to mobilize and
develop the topics of the Forum.

On the Platform www.fsms.org.br we will make space, as from January 2019,
for exchanges and permanent education concerning topics of the Forum. All
contributions are welcome.

Contacts:





Armando De Negri Filho – for the Executive Commitee of WSFHSS
armandodenegri at yahoo.com

Nancy J. Molina A. for the National Organizing Committee in Colombia
njmolinaa at unal.edu.co

Mario Hernández – for the National Organizing Committee in Colombia
mehernandeza at unal.edu.co

Francine Mestrum – for the Executive Committee Europe,
mestrum at skynet.be


Vittorio Agnoletto – for the Executive Committee Europe,
vittorio at vittorioagnoletto.it

Aziz Rhali – for the Executive Committee Mediterranean

Maris Dela Cruz – for the Executive Committee Asia,  sirmallet at gmail.com

Kassia Fernandes de Carvalho – Plataforma FSMSSS, www.fsms.org.br
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