The Social Forum made its debut in Belgium at a meeting in Brussels on Saturday 21 September. 150 associations met together for the launch of the initiative that has chosen for its slogan: “Another world is possible”. The Forum was attended by the representatives of NGOs and trades-unions, and also Christian associations and organizations, such as the Justice and Peace Commission, Pax Christi and the Christian movement for peace. The meeting was the follow-up to the Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Its purpose explain its promoters was to “launch a dynamic of hope to construct alternatives and globalize justice, peace and solidarity”. Coming from very different situations, the associations have adopted a “Charter of principles” to which all the participants in the Forum adhere. The Charter is subdivided into 14 points and spells out the contents on which the Forum is based and the specific actions it is intended to promote. “The alternatives proposed by the Social Forum of Belgium says point 3 of the Charter are opposed to a process of globalization led by the big multinationals and by governments and international institutions at the service of their own interests”. The Forum’s member associations, by contrast, want to “champion, as a new stage in the history of the world, a globalization of solidarity that respects the universal rights of man and the environment”. After the launch of the initiative, the aim of the associations is to pass from the global to the local, by promoting over 100 forums in other towns and cities of the country. In Italy, too, the representatives of over 60 Catholic associations and movements that have given their support to the “Sentinels of the morning” campaign met in Florence on 21 September to present the document and begin a new phase in their commitment to issues of globalization. They expressed a determined “no” to the possibility of a war in Iraq. “We are firmly against any preventive war against Iraq they declared and think it mistaken for individual nations to instigate and manage conflicts with consequences of an international nature”.
