Is the World Social Forum (WSF) like the bird Phoenix starting to fly again? In Asia, Middle East and North America and in Latin America this is the wrong question to put, here social forums are alive and a WSF was held 2022 in Mexico. But to most movements in the global North the World Social Forum has been considered by many as in practice dead.

There are now substantial signs that the World Social Forum process as a family of several initiatives finally is renewing itself. It is the vital Asia-Pacific Social Forum that has taken the lead and invites to a new WSF to be held in Nepal in February 2024.

But above all steps has been taken to solve the long inner conflict that has tempered the possibility for the WSF process to become effective. Two factions has been strongly advocating opposing views on the role of WSF. One being that it should only be an open space. Any attempts at permanently trying to prepare better convergence among movements and using WSF to support them to become more of a political subject has been met by suspicion. The other being proposals to turn the whole of WSF into a decision-making meeting.

In a special meeting held in Tunis in December 2022 to solve the seemingly contradictory visions finally came up with a compromise. A permanent assembly of social movements working both inside WSF and independently outside as part of the WSF family has been established under the name of World Assembly of Struggles and Resistance of the WSF. This while the WSF as a whole maintain its open space character. Read more here.

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