February 15, Kathmandu.
In the cold days of mid-January, business, political, and social leaders of the ‘world’ gathered at Davos, Switzerland, to discuss the pressing global issues in the annual World Economic Forum (WEF). “Rebuilding trust”–slogan for the 2024 gathering centred around international conflicts, burdened economies, climate change, and responsible AI. How much of the commitments leaders made in the meeting will translate into actions is yet to unfold. But the forum has gathered a heap of criticisms since its inception in 1971.
Criticism of the WEF goes beyond the reported surge in the number of prostitutes in Davos on the eve of annual meetings. Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington has argued that the forum has contributed to a detached elite “whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations.” European Parliamentary Research Services (EPRS) has identified that the critics of the WEF view the forum as a way for leaders to make significant decisions without being answerable to their electorate or shareholders. Other criticisms levelled against the forum include lack of financial transparency, lack of standards for selecting delegates, and fostering corporate influence in supra-national and democratic institutions.
However, resistance against the Davos meeting is not new. World Social Forum (WSF) began as an alternative to the WEF in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Emerging from the issues of the Global South, the WSF attempts to provide alternative answers to the pressing global issues. WSF, in its own words, serves as “an open space and platform for the convergence of a diverse range of participants, including social movements, labourers, farmers, civil society groups, marginalised communities, and those affected by the impacts of neoliberal capitalism and privatisation.”
The 2024 edition of the WSF will be organised in Kathmandu from 15th to 19th February, a month after the WEF meeting in Davos. With the theme ‘Another world now’, the forum will reportedly bring together more than 1,200 civil society organisations from 92 countries to discuss economic inequality, climate justice, labour, migration, caste discrimination, gender equality, peace, and sustainable development. As its part, the WSF will also hold the Intercontinental Youth Forum and the Parliamentary Forum.