Institut International de Recherche et de Formation

Fellows discuss IIRE's future course

Every participant in a session at the IIRE writes a balance sheet at the end of the session, and these remarks and suggestions are important for the content and format of future sessions. But because our Fellows come from all over the world, it is not easy to bring permanent staff and collaborators together to collectively exchange experiences with sessions and discuss future activities. In February 1999, however, many of our regular co-workers met in a rare IIRE Fellows' meeting, to draw a balance sheet of our activities over the last couple of years and to brainstorm about future sessions. It was a very productive meeting, in which many ideas emerged to improve the quality of our work, immediately or in the longer term.

IIRE Fellows rethink global justice

Changes in the capitalist system and the rise of the global justice movement are posing big challenges for the kind of political education we do at the IIRE. We took these challenges into account three years ago when we renamed our annual fall North-South School a Global Justice School. But until now the lecturers who do the teaching at it have not had a chance to discuss the new challenges in depth with each other.

Last November many of the activists who attended our Global Justice School had been at the World Social Forum or European Social Forum and were feeling pressure from the movements to come up with strategic answers. Sometimes they demanded more from the IIRE Fellows who did the lectures than the lecturers were prepared for. Clearly it was time to "educate the educators" and discuss the political and economic debates the movements are having. The results were first, an in-depth weekend of discussions at a Fellows' Seminar here in Amsterdam on July 12-13, and second, a new curriculum and vision for the next Global Justice School.