This article, written by Ruby van der Wekken from RIPESS Europe, offers an update following the strategic meetings of the Nyéléni Forum Steering Committee and Communication team held in Sri Lanka in May 2025, as part of the ongoing mobilisation towards the 3rd Global Nyéléni Forum.
Preparations are stepping up towards the 3rd 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 (which is situated some 100 km’s from capital Colombo).
The 3rd Nyeleni Global 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.
Beyond the Open Space : converging to build a common political agenda towards Systemic Transformation
The 1st Nyeleni Global 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 in that debate at the centre. In 2015, a 2nd Nyeleni Global Forum took place, laying out a common definition of Agroecology as a key element for the construction of food sovereignty.(See a brief history of the food sovereignty movement : https://nyeleniglobalforum.org/food-sovereignty/).
Today towards the 3rd 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 convergence, the Forum itself did not speak. 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 as such wants to be a space of political formation based on the political action axes of work which are the result of the process of convergence and which as such can still give rise to new issues, as well as resolve contradictions.
Converging representation
In the Nyeleni forum process, representation is being broken down geographically but also according to constituency and intersectional criteria. Participants include small-scale food producers as well as representatives from various constituencies such as Climate Justice, Feminist movements, Social and Solidarity Economy, Human Rights defenders, Peace builders, Health advocates, Right to the City movements, and research communities.
This convergence is an acknowledgment of the interdependence of struggles as well as wants to strengthen the marginalised voices the forum is bringing to the forefront. During the Steering committee meetings it was expressed how the forum wants to enlarge the participation of other movements in the forum process after the 3rd Nyeleni forum, whilst keeping on walking organically and not too fast. 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.
Also artists are 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.
Communications : a political strategic tool
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 some organizations involved in the process, who, through their work, have come to recognize the power of narratives as tools for communication and political transformation. 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?
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 Nyeleni 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.
As the forum approaches, 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!