9th Local Authorities Forum (FAL) for Social Inclusion

The ninth assembly of the Local Authorities Forum (FAL) for Social Inclusion and Participatory Democracy will take place on 8 February 2011 in Dakar (Senegal) during the World Social Forum (WSF). The FAL will be entitled "Local power and global crisis", and will bring together cities from all over the world to debate on the local alternatives to the global crisis. The event will include several plenary sessions with six parallel workshops on participatory democracy, decentralised cooperation, gender, climate change, public services and the right to the city. The CSIPDHR is coordinating the organisation of one of these workshops, entitled "Towards inclusive cities based on the right to the city: the issue of inclusion of migrants".

The FAL was established in Porto Alegre in 2001, and for the last decade has brought together local authorities from all over the world seeking to construct a strategic approach with alternative social movements. After three events in Porto Alegre with the WSF (2001, 2002 and 2003) the FAL accompanied the European Social Forums in Florence (2002), Saint Denis (2003) and London (2004), and the Americas Social Forum in Quito (2004). The same year, the World Assembly of the FAL moved to Barcelona (IV FAL), which led to Agenda 21 of Culture. After this fourth event away from the WSF, the FAL returned to it at the V FAL - Porto Alegre (2005), the VI FAL - Caracas (2006), the VII FAL - Nairobi (2007) and finally, the VIII FAL - Belém do Pará (2009). This latter event was preceded by the Amazon FAL (FALA), which brought together many local governments from the Amazon region in an unprecedented meeting.

 The progressive boost from the FAL led to the creation in 2005 of the UCLG Committee on Social Inclusion and Participative Democracy and the World Forum of Peripheral Local Authorities (FALP), which has held world meetings on two occasions (Nanterre 2006 and Getafe 2010). The FALP subsequently led to the UCLG Committee on Peripheral Cities.