Nyeleni III: Towards a Unified Political Agenda

Article by Ruby van der Wekken, RIPESS Europe

(Report following the meetings of the Nyeleni forum Steering committee and Communication meetings in Sri Lanka, in May 2025)

Preparations are stepping up towards the third Nyeleni global forum which is now set to be held from 6-13th September in Kandy, Sri Lanka, and which saw a full week of steering committee meetings in Sri Lanka in May, including also a visit to the venue grounds (which are situated some 100km’s from capital Colombo).

The third Nyeleni forum is now importantly preparing itself to be a space of political formation on the convergence of the struggles towards systemic change. During the meetings a first press conference held was well attended by local media, setting a strong footing for the forum to be held in Sri Lanka which, as the release read, shaped by the violence of debt ousted a neoliberal regime and is building alternatives. The meetings of the steering committee were followed by an inspiring two days narrative developing workshop, as well as two days of communication (strategy) meetings.

RIPESS Europe Co-coordinators Drazen Simlesa took part in the meetings of the Global steering committee of the Nyeleni forum process whilst Ruby van der Wekken joined in as part of the Nyeleni communications team.

Beyond the Open Space : converging to build a common political agenda towards Systemic Transformation

The first Nyeleni forum took place in 2007 in Mali, gathering some 500 delegates from around the world to deepen the concept of food sovereignty and set the framework for the growing food sovereignty movement – meaning not only the right to a sufficient amount of calories, but also the right to determine the entire food system of production, distribution and consumption and to put today’s marginal voices at the centre in that debate. In 2015, a second Nyeleni forum took place, laying out a common definition of Agroecology as a key element for the construction of food sovereignty.(A bit of history of the food sovereignty movement). Today towards the third Nyeleni global forum, the movement is building stronger alliances with other movements with a common denominator being the working towards Systemic Transformation.

Beyond the Open Space

In terms of global processes entailing the calling together of a convergence of movements, the World Social Forum has remained a unique reference, with a next global World Social Forum of Intersections taking place in June in Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal-Canada). Following the 1999 Seattle WTO days of protest, The World Social Forum since its inception in 2001 importantly facilitated an Open Space process bringing to the forefront and further developing the existing solutions for ‘Another World (which) is (here and) possible’ under an anti-neoliberal Charter of Principles to which everyone participating underwrote to adhere to. Whilst in this manner supporting the convergence of movements, the Forum itself did not come out with a unified political voice. The Forum’s Assembly of Social movements did come out with a political agenda, but the World Social Forum itself did not.

Profoundly different to that process, the Nyeleni global forum process goes beyond an Open Space onto the shaping of a joint political voice. In different regional forums processes which took place throughout the last years, a common political action agenda has been forged which was discussed during the meetings of the Steering committee now in May, and which is currently in its last weeks of finalisation. The political agenda provides a critical understanding of food sovereignty and related topics, caters to movement building and is shaped around a number of thematic axes – the building of a people’s economy being one of them – and will be launched during the days of the actual forum. The forum days want to be a space of political formation for its participating delegates based on the political action axes of work, which in this process can still give rise to new issues, as also resolve contradictions.

Converging representation

In this process, representation is being broken down besides geographically according to constituency and intersectional criteria. Whilst the majority of the participants are made up of small scale farmers, other smaller constituencies will come from the Climate Justice, Feminist, Social and solidarity economy, Human Rights defenders, Peace builders, Health, Right to the city movements and also research representatives (each of 5%).

During the Steering Committee meetings, it was expressed that the forum aims to broaden the participation of other movements in the forum process after the third Nyéléni Forum, while continuing to move forward organically and at a sustainable pace Missing are for instance trade unions, migrant organisations and also importantly youth organisations.

The Forum is also seeing representation from engaged scholars wanting to see how research can be supporting the agenda of the Forum, whilst importantly incorporating also traditional knowledge and the notion that all people are knowledge holders! Some 150 researchers have so far already signed up to this process.

Artists are also an important participation segment at the forum, with some 35 – plastic, audiovisual, music – artists having answered to a Call which went out in preceding months and different forms of art displays are planned for during the forum.

In an attempt to give headway to all this diversity, Interpretation during the Forum is being foreseen during the larger plenary moments for up 17 languages, catering besides colonial languages to a range of local languages.

Nyeleni Forum program

The Forum is taking place from the 6th to the 13th of September and will have two moments for the Regions of the process to meet; 1.5 days of assemblies for women/youth/gender and sexual diversities, 4 different format content days (importantly also linking to Sri Lanka’s local struggles), 1 day of field trips (for which the local organising partner has already identified some 30 destinations) and one day designated for the defining of the Nyeleni process next steps and closing. In addition, the Steering committee of the forum will have its meetings on the 5th and 14th of September, importantly pointing to the Forum as being just one – albeit significant – moment in the Nyeleni global process.

The dominant narratives and our counter narratives

Following their meetings, Steering committee members continued together with members from the Nyeleni communications team for two days of Narratives workshop around the unpacking of dominant narratives and the making of stories based on poten-full counter narratives. The workshop was made possible via the support of the Action Group on Erosion, Tehcnology and Concentration (ETC), who has come to understand through their work the powerful communication tool narratives are. We can have all the evidence in the world, but without a narrative and inspiring and empowering story telling, our message will not hit home. Can we change the way we tell our stories to have as much impact as the dominant narratives seem to have?

On the first day of the workshop, participants broke out according to the thematic axes of the political action drafted agenda and listed what dominant narratives today are impeding the work of movements working towards systemic transformation. So for instance regarding the axe of the building of a People’s economy, hegemonic narratives listed included that a people’s economy is often seen as informal, and associated with the not paying of taxes; that it is a chaotic economy; that it can not reach all sectors of society and that its products produced are expensive. Following and with the aid of a first Narrative analysis canvas, one main dominant narrative was unpacked in terms of what are key actors upholding the narrative, kind belief systems and values the narrative upholds, which are the impacts of the narrative, what actors are being marginalised; whilst in a second canvas actors were grouped in relation to the narrative as being supporters or opposers.

On the second day of the narrative workshop, participants set out to determine counter narratives to the dominant narrative unpacked during the previous day, and picked a main one to work with. Via yet another canvas it was assessed whether the values and assumptions of the dominant narrative are to be leaned on or challenged; what the existing stories are that can uplift people and change their perceptions about the identified issue; how does the chosen story challenge the status quo and give hope; and who can we reach with the counter narrative. The last part of the workshop then was the concrete designing of a media product telling the story of chosen narrative, which led the groups to imagine the co-productions of video’s, but also video games.

Communications: a political strategic tool

The last two days of the Sri Lanka meetings were held amongst Nyeleni forum communication team participants. The Nyeleni communications work has been divided in different fronts – audiovisual; graphic design; press; text, web and social media – which each have encouraged Neyeleni forum delegates to take up an active role, and which have been meeting regularly for months, with these meetings now having been the first in person meetings. During the meetings each front charted out a working plan of activities.

Communications in the coming months leading up to the forum are predominantly geared towards participants of the process – wanting to enhance mutual understanding between the converging movements with regards to their values, principles, concepts and theories of change – but will then progressively start to focus also on external communications, with the coming out of the common political agenda and of course during the forum itself, with for instance a daily bulletin, radio broadcasting and podcasts in the make and being further planned.

At three months from the forum, it seems an ambitious Nyeleni process after having had to reroute recently following a politically too challenging context in India where the forum originally was intended to take place, is well on its way to deliver its main message in September in Sri Lanka : the time to collectively rally behind Systemic Transformation is here and now!