blePreparations of tourism-related events for the World Social Forum 2004
Dear colleagues and friends,
A number of NGOs and networks concerned with tourism issues are preparing activities in relation of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai, India, in January 2004. Started in Porto Allegre in Southern Brazil as a counter-weight to the annual World Economic Forum which is driven by global corporate interests, the WSF has quickly expanded into a focal point of peoples' movements across the world and demonstrated growing global unity and solidarity among people struggling for human rights and justice for all. At the WSF in Mumbai, India, about 75,000 delegates will be expected, of who about 10,000 will be from outside India.
Equations from India, the Hongkong-based Ecumenical Coalition on Tourism and Tourism Watch from Germany are jointly organizing the following events under the theme “Tourism-a search for equitable options”:
One panel discussion for 4000 people,
Four focused workshops for 200 to 500 people,
One indepth workshop for activists, and
Solidarity and Learning and Exchange tours in the host country India.
The organizing team has set up a wsf-tourism egroup (contact: winnu@vsnl.net ) and a website http://wsf-tourism.org/ to offer a broad opportunity to participate in the tourism debate and to shape the inputs for the WSF tourism events. Below we are sharing some issues raised by the tourism NGOs, all of which need urgent attention at the WSF.
In addition, we are presenting information on an international seminar entitled “Tourism: Unfair Practices – Equitable Options”, which also aims to identify important themes in anticipation of the upcoming WSF. This seminar will be hosted from 8 to 9 December 2003 in Hannover, Germany, by DANTE, a network of 16 initiatives and NGOs from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, focusing on sustainable tourism development (the organizers of the seminar can be contacted at fernweh@iz3w.org)....