The Bamako Appeal - CACIM’s Initiatives

Bamako Appeal | Process | CACIM's Initiatives | Articles | Comments

We at CACIM believe that while The Bamako Appeal has the quality of a dramatically important world intervention, unfortunately it has potentials not only of very positive outcomes but also perhaps some rather negatives ones, both because of some of its content (both present and missing) and also the process by which it seems to have been finalised. Precisely because it addresses so many important dimensions of life, society, and struggle however, and therefore so many ‘sectors’, and also because of the high pedigree of its authorship, it needs, we believe, the most attentive reading and a careful, critical debate.

Accordingly, from our side at CACIM we have taken / are taking several steps towards opening a public debate on this document :

• We have opened it for debate on the WSFDiscuss list serve, and several comments on it have already appeared– by, among others, Antonio Martins of ATTAC Brazil and the WSF International Office, Peter Waterman, Subir Sinha at SOAS London, Dorothea Haerlin of ATTAC Germany, Peter Marcuse at Columbia University, and Michael Albert of ZNet. (To subscribe, register here or just send an empty e-mail to or else visit WSFDiscuss Archives.
• We have sent out the Appeal to several journals in India and internationally for publication, both in hard copy and on the Internet.
• We are working towards organising an open meeting on the Appeal in New Delhi, India, where we are based, probably in August this year, and we are also urging others elsewhere to do the same. (We had also called a meeting on the Appeal during the Karachi Social Forum, on March 25, but had to cancel this because most of our team were denied visas to go to Pakistan for the Forum.)
• We have sent out and are continuing to send out the Appeal to individuals who we feel sure would be interested in knowing about it, with the request that they review and discuss it as widely as possible, and if possible also call meetings on it. Other than those already posted, people who are looking at the document and have prepared or are preparing comments include C T Kurien and C R Bijoy from India, Stellan Vinthagen at Gothenburg University, Sweden, and Kolya Abramsky at NYU Binghamton, USA.
• And finally, we have of course kept Samir Amin and François Houtart fully informed of all this, including forwarding them copies of comments and/or links. We have also proposed that the debate should continue, and we have invited them to respond to the comments we are receiving and informing them of, and in general to join the debate.