From the Forum to the Future

Caroline, with most of our Jubilee US party, left early on Thursday to go to Zambia to meet debt campaigners and look at some of the effects of debt cancellation. Meanwhile, those of us still in Nairobi finished the Forum, and have been undertaking evaluations, meetings and planning.

Marathons in the searing heat from some of Nairobi’s worst slums led to the Closing Ceremony in Uhuru (Freedom) Park in the centre of Nairobi. Having thousands of the countries’ poorest people lead the procession reminded us all of our main focus. Then orators and musicians from around the world helped us celebrate the Forum’s vision. Many of the world’s most disadvantaged people – such as the Saharawi from Africa’s last colony, in the Western Sahara – processed at the ceremony and shared their unfashionable causes with us.

The Forum has been an enormous undertaking. Not surprisingly for an event which wants to give as much freedom and ownership as possible to its participants, there were some logistical problems. Also there is an inevitable tension between maximum accessibility and reasonable security. But overall, the Forum has been a great success, enabling people from all levels of society and from all over the world to address the needs of those who are forgotten at meetings like the World Economic Forum in Davos. Let’s hope that the strengthened networks and energy of Nairobi 2007 help us remember - as "You negotiate ... We die" on the T-shirts reminded us - the urgency of making real progress if more lives are not to be wasted.