More on the WSF – the big event starts on Saturday but already a host of pre-events have begun or will begin in the next few days. The exciting thing is that Nairobi offers African social movements the first opportunity to present themselves and their issues to the world in their own way and on their home ground. The hope is that they will all come away with something more than just a bunch of papers and business cards. And yes there will be no sanitizing of the realities of Kenyan daily life for the masses of poor and dispossessed – apparently they will be visible to all.
Unlike other international gatherings, we will not attempt to sanitize underdevelopment or criminalize poverty in Kenya by locking up all the street kids, beggars, hookers or carting off other members of society who are on the margins of the Kenyan neo-colonial periphery, locked out from sustainable development and denied a chance of thriving; there will be no attempt to stifle those vocal voices of protests who yearn for a Kenya and an Africa that is peaceful, democratic, progressive and prosperous.
Looking at the WSF website and reading The Kenyan Democracy Project post on the WSF it all sounds rather chaotic. I have images of thousands of people running around trying to connect up with their various networks, workshops, ad hoc meetings and breakaway protests. All this under miles of tarpaulin covers and hundreds of portaloos – this I seriously dread. How hot is it in Nairobi in January under tarpaulin? Well at least it wont be raining – portaloos and rain…cannot think of anything worse.
Onyango Oloo, the National Coordinator of the Kenya Social Forum has a piece in this week’s Pambazuka News in which he highlights some of the important issues that will be raised by local Kenyan groups.
“colonial era land edicts and policies which dispossessed their communities; the impact of mining and extraction activities on the environment and human livelihoods; discriminatory policies by successive governments that have guaranteed the stubborn survival of pre-colonial conditions of poverty and underdevelopment among many pastoralist and minority communities; the arrogant disregard for the concerns raised by (for example) Samburu women raped over the years by British soldiers dispatched on military exercises in those Kenyan communities; proposals on ending conflict and creating conditions for sustainable growth; the role of youth; tensions persisting with neo-colonial era settler farmers and indigenous Kenyan comprador businessmen in hiving off thousands of hectares of land while the pastoralists and minority communities are targets of state terror, evictions and denunciations and other related concerns.”
Oloo also wrote a piece in July last year “Gendering the WSF” in which he discusses the marginalisation of women at the WSF …….
At the end of the day, this reality of women’s marginalization should not be an earth-shattering shock to anyone. The WSF process is a microcosm of concrete conditions in the world today. The gender dynamics within the World Social Forum are a reflection of the actually existing power relations between women and men all over the world.
Whilst it may not be an “earth-shattering shock” one would have thought that the WSF would be at least one place that stood in opposition to the the “microcosm of concrete conditions in the world today” after all isn’t the slogan “another world is possible”? What is far more disturbing than the marginalisation of women is Oloo’s statement on the violence against women that takes place at the WSF including rape, sexual harassment, touching and groping and sexist jokes. Despite hours spent searching the internet I cannot find anything on rape or sexual harassment at the WSF and I wonder why no one has mentioned this, why it is not being discussed, why women and men are not voicing their outrage and shock that this has been happening at past WSFs.
As one of the main people involved in the organising and coordinating of the WSF in Naiobi, Oloo did come up with some possible suggestions on how to deal with sexual violence and harassment in Nairobi. For example he suggests recruiting and training security guards and setting up a rape crisis center in Nairobi. It is not clear whether either of these have been implemented but given the high incidence of rape in Kenya and the non-response of the Kenyan police together with statements such as no doesn’t mean no in Kenya made by a Kenyan MP it is not exactly reassuring for women delegates. Another suggestion he has is that women survivors of rape and sexual violence be housed in single sex hostels where they are protected by extra security guards. I find this quite ridiculous. So women survivors are to be ghettoised into separate hostels whilst the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves and those who are raped this year can then join their sisters in the next WSF at these ghettoised hostels? As always the onus is on the woman rather than the rapist – my rape rather than his rape. More to the point is why are delegates who have carried out acts of sexual violence and harassment still free to attend the WSF? What sanctions have been/will be applied to these men this time round not just by the police but by the WSF itself. Are we women safe at the WSF or not?
