Seminar on

WSF 2004 - A Brief Report

Organised by Centre for Education and Communication (CEC), Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), Social Awareness and Voluntary Education (SAVE), Thai Labour Campaign and We in the Zone, in partnership with Oxfam GB

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World Social Forum, Mumbai 2004
The fourth annual edition of World Social Forum (WSF 2004) that took place in Mumbai, India from January 16 - 21, 2004 brought together more than a hundred thousand people representing social movements, trade unions, academics and NGOs around the world, who believed that "Another World Is Possible", the slogan of WSF. The World Social Forum was conceived as an international forum against neo-liberal policies and capitalist led globalization. The first WSF was held in January 2001, in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil. It was timed to coincide with the holding of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

While in Davos powerful transnational corporations, political leaders and international economic bureaucracy charted the course of neo-liberal global agenda, the WSF provided "...an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and inter-linking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society centred on the human person".

The next World Social Forum will be in Porto Alegre, Brazil, before it goes to Africa in 2006.

Preface
In different countries, trade unions and other grass root organisations have been involved in organising garment workers. Some of these efforts have been successful, while many others were suppressed or confronted with relocation of the industry to other countries where workers are not organised.

Seminar on ‘Experiences in Organising Garment Workers’, held on January 17, 2004 during the World Social Forum in Mumbai, looked at the organising strategies employed in differnt countries, which have led to an improvement in working and living conditions of garment workers and their collective strength. It also examined the nature of their organisation, their national as well as international linkages and their effectiveness in making political impact at the respective governmental levels. The seminar was jointly organised by Centre for Education and Communication (CEC), New Delhi; Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), Europe; Social Awareness and Voluntary Education (SAVE), Tirupur; Thai Labour Campaign, Thailand and We in the Zone, Sri Lanka. This was done in partnership with Oxfam GB.