North-South School 2000: Focus on Africa, Islam, Women
From 4 to 25 November 2000, 18 people from
12 different countries came to the IIRE for the North-South School.
The school was conducted in French and English, which made possible a strong
turnout from sub-Saharan Africa: five of the 18, two each from Senegal and Mali and one from
Congo-Brazzaville. This was the first IIRE session in which someone came
specially from Africa to give a report on Africa,
and it was certainly one of our best reports ever on the continent! He spoke
from his own direct experience about the civil wars that have devastated much
of post-Cold War Africa, the ethnic conflicts that are supposed to underlie
these wars and the machinations of multinational corporations that are often clearly
more to blame.
We also had participants from the Middle
East - two from Jordan and
one from Lebanon - as well
as two each from Pakistan
and the Philippines.
The other countries represented from the South were South
Korea and Paraguay,
while Sweden (two people),
Québec and Australia
represented the North. Thus the South once more strongly outnumbered the north
at this session, in part due to last minute change of plans by participants who
had been expected from Germany
and the Netherlands.
The discussion in the school covered topics
from an in-depth look at the neoliberal globalization process, with its impact
on the South and the North - every participant had something to say on this
subject! - to the differing role of states in Europe and Africa.
As usual, it was the application of the lectures to specific issues in each
country that generated the most exciting and interesting questions. One of the
most challenging discussions was on the role of Islamic fundamentalism and its
political impact. Not for the first time, the divergent experiences of the
participants from Pakistan
(dealing with the Afghan Taliban) and the Philippines
(dealing with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in their country's
ever-rebellious Mindanao region in the south)
led to some lively exchanges. This debate will doubtless be carried on at
future IIRE sessions.
Another interesting area of exchange was the
role of women in our political analysis and organizations. These lectures and
discussions revealed major differences between people's analysis and
experiences in different countries. Not all participants saw feminist demands
as inherent to a working class analysis, particularly given the presence of
participants from very diverse political backgrounds. This may have been the
first IIRE session at which a participant had previously had political
education in the former USSR!
The fact that he was here at all is a sign of how much once hostile currents
have opened up to discussion over the past decade.
In any event, the debate over feminism and
the workers' movement is always a useful one to review, especially now given
the impact of neoliberal globalization on women. There was also a women's
meeting held to share information about the women's liberation work conducted
in each country. One particularly exciting discovery was that the women from Senegal, the Philippines
and Sweden
were all involved, at different stages, in organizing around women's health
care.
In the final evaluations, the participants
felt that the school had been a significant experience in their political
development and wanted to continue their discussions after they had returned
home. They all took back to their countries this intense educational training
as well as the experience of living and working together at the IIRE. All were
planning on helping prepare their groups to send other participants to future
North-South Schools. The evaluation made clear that these participants will be
able to use the planned IIRE website to help with many tasks - advance reading,
follow-up study, linking up with educational programmes in their own countries
- that have always been among the trickiest for us.
Our ability to help so many participants
attend from desperately poor countries was due in large part to generous
support from the Jakob Moneta Stiftung of Germany and the Tom Gustafsson
Memorial Fund of Sweden. This report would not be complete without our
heartfelt thanks to them.