The IX Panamazonic Social Forum – FOSPA – for the defense of the Amazon begins
#FospaEnAcción #DefendamosLaAmazonía
November 9, 2020
With the participation of more than 1300 people, various communities and organizations from Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana – the nine countries of the Amazon Basin – and other territories that recognize the importance of the region; From November 12 to 15, 2020, the IX International Meeting of the Panamazonic Social Forum – FOSPA – will be held virtually – due to the crisis generated by Covid 19 – which seeks to bring together the participation, articulation, mobilizations and alliances between social movements, networks and expressions of organized civil society, from around the world, in order to promote the convergence of proposals for the defense and survival of life in the Amazon.
The FOSPA process, linked to the World Social Forum, has been underway since 2002. Currently Colombia is the host country of this important event, preceded by eight international meetings held in Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and Peru. This process is guided by a Charter of Principles, which defines the character of solidarity, plurinational, intercultural, egalitarian, without borders and common, which is based on the sovereignty, security, welfare and ancestral wisdom of the Amazonian peoples, to fight against economic models and life, predatory, extractive and patriarchal, which for hundreds of years have generated violence, climate change, corporate and military interventionism, generating a continuous ethnocide and ecocide, throughout the Amazon region and the world.
FOSPA articulates diverse demands, building itself as a stage where organizational expressions of indigenous peoples, peasants, Afro-Colombians, urban, women’s processes, agro-ecology, communication, economics, environmentalists, church, academics, social movements and international cooperation, among others, are organized autonomously in local and national committees, that converge in the FOSPA International Committee, and around Action Initiatives -Ideas- (where at least three organizations from different countries converge in a common purpose) to guarantee the implementation of actions that bring us closer to social, environmental, economic and gender justice in the Amazon region on a permanent basis, that is, more than an event, we are a constant process of struggle.
For this 9th meeting, the advances of the 8th version of the FOSPA, which took place in Tarapoto, Peru in 2017, have been collected, as well as the 14 pre-forums that during three years the different National and Local Committees carried out, to strengthen the organizational work against the capitalist model of extractive and patriarchal development. In addition, the ideas have advanced their own meetings in order to strengthen alliances and strengthen life bets, from diverse resistance actions, mobilizations and alternative proposals, framed in the Good Living, self-government, food sovereignty and security, recognition of collective rights, strengthening of the peoples’ own identities, recognition of their own education, promotion of public policies of cultural diversity, sustainable management of the forest, recovery of native products and species, strengthening of ancestral wisdom, vigilance and participatory environmental monitoring, among others.
During the days of the event and thanks to the support of community radio stations and real-time transmissions in Spanish, Portuguese, French and English; with the flags #FospaEnAcción and #DefendLife, the more than 1300 people registered will be able to expand their knowledge, discuss and generate articulations with those who will converge at 150 points of collective participation in person – groups of 15 to 50 people – in the different countries of the basin and even on other continents. In order to strengthen the organizational work networks, we will work around 3 Malokas -structural programmatic axiss-: Peoples and cultures in Amazonian identity, Territories and life paths and Autonomies and community government, and 10 Action Initiatives. We will have an opening harmonization ceremony, a presentation of the context of the nine countries of the basin, complemented by the Pan-Amazon conflict mapping initiative and the reading of the verdict of the II Ethical Tribunal of Justice and Andean Amazonian Women’s Rights. The four days will include interludes of cultural activities, to finally close with the reading of the Charter of Mocoa -Colombian city chosen in 2018 as the site of the IX FOSPA- and a closing ceremony of harmonization.
Subsequently, on November 27 and 28, the Virtual Fair of Community Experiences will be held, a space of self-managed activities, in which various organizations and social processes of the basin will present research, documents, books, economic, artistic, and social activities, among other actions, that seek to promote and make visible what is done in the Amazon, for its defense and survival.
From the Panamazonic Social Forum we highlight that this common bet, as an activity of world articulation, is structured in the integrating principles of coherence, sense of belonging, participation and action without damage, and in the meantime, our sense is essentially to strengthen a propositive and transforming character. The IX International Meeting of FOSPA is an urgent invitation to irrevocably join the diversities in the bets for life, it is a global call of the Amazonian and Andean peoples to commit ourselves and to advance concrete actions in defense of the Amazon, on which the life of Humanity depends.
Join us in that bet, join us and shout with us: For life, we defend the Amazon!
Panamazonic Social Forum FOSPA
For more information visit: www.forosocialpanamazonico.com
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Download the public statement here
IX-FOSPA-Public-statement
