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 Intervention by Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch, at the Opening Session of the Civil Society Forum of the Second World Summit for Social Development

Doha, Qatar, November 5, 2025

Excellencies, friends and colleagues from civil society, Let me start on a personal note and some backstage information.
32 years ago, I was in Oaxaca, Mexico, attending a civil society meeting on how we were going to fight the World Bank-led structural adjustment policies. At the same time there was a big UN meeting in Oaxaca on poverty. Chilean Ambassador to the UN, Juan Somavía, who is here with us, had just been appointed as chair of the preparatory process of the 1995 Social Summit, and he came to our little hotel to convince civil society leaders that the Social Summit could become a valid channel for our concerns and could amplify them. We heard his invitation and appreciated it. There was a lot of debate. As is always the case within civil society not everybody agreed, but at the end we participated massively in the preparatory process and the Summit itself in Copenhagen. There was a big colourful crowd of 12,000 people at the parallel “NGO Forum ‘95,”in Holmen, a former naval base near Copenhagen, and the conference itself teemed with 2300 NGO representatives from 811 NGOs, structured loosely around many issue-based caucuses, like the women’s caucus that was brilliantly led by Bella Abzug, and the development caucus, that I was honoured to co-chair.
Many things were diƯerent then. We were hopeful that the end of the cold war would bring a peace dividend that would make poverty eradication possible. We were hopeful that having computers talk to each other, which was a novelty then, would open a new era of free information flows and improved accountability.
We wanted of the Summit an international tax on financial transactions that could fund universal social protection. We wanted an end to “structural adjustment“, and we got a commitment, one of the ten Social Summit commitments, that aimed at giving those policies a “human face”. The term “structural adjustment” ended up having such a bad reputation that the World Bank decided to change that name, but not the underlying policies that are now called “austerity”.
We did not get then all we wanted, but on the last day of the Summit we decided that the solemn commitments to end poverty and achieve gender equality deserved being followed.
Social Watch was created to report one year later how our governments, and the international system had implemented their promises. Year after year SW brought hundreds of reports from citizen coalitions in 85 countries to the attention of the UN and the process of researching and drafting them helped peoples’ organization to network and understand the complex links, opportunities and constraints between the local and the global.
The trade and investment regime that had just been enshrined with the creation of the WTO, a year before the Social Summit was a major concern, so much that WSSD included in its resolution a clear warning that states should intervene when (not if) markets fail.

The world is diƯerent now. There has been no peace dividend and there is no peace now.
By exempting digital platforms from the basic responsibilities of anyone using ink and paper to publish, an unaccountable “broligarchy” of billionaires was allowed, even encouraged, to flourish. Hate propagates unrestricted and the flood of misinformation risks making us all insensitive while genocides are broadcasted in real time while the Security Council fails to act.
Climate change creates havoc and the COVID pandemic evidenced through “vaccine apartheid” the failure of the current system where intellectual property becomes a marketable commodity and does not deliver for the common good.
During the pandemic women were, once again, the main care providers who saved life and societies, so very often without pay or recognition and risking growing levels of poverty and personal debts.
Now in Doha our governments are renewing their pledges of three decades ago, and adding new commitments that we welcome, to reduce inequalities, to promote care and support, which many countries already recognize as a right, and to ensure universal social protection, which is a Human Right enshrined in the Universal Declaration.
But we are not being told what they will do diƯerently to achieve a diƯerent result. As civil society we will take these promises seriously, name and shame when necessary and promote the political will for social development, that Doha is reintroducing in the UN agenda.
This is in essence wat we will be discussing at the 10 events of the Civil Society Forum during the coming two days.
Yhe notions of social development and social integration are at the heart of the WSSD2, but they are not a new concept.
700 years ago, the Arab philosopher, historian and founder of modern sociology Ibn Khaldun was calling that concept Asabiyyah , which is usually translated as “group solidarity” or “social cohesion”.
To achieve Assabiyah, he wrote in his Muqaddimah in 1377, the requirements are “…submitting to the truth, seeking justice for the oppressed, humbling oneself to the poor, listening to the complaints of those in need, adhering to laws and worship, upholding and understanding them and their reasons.” Further, he wrote “abstaining from betrayal, deceit, and treachery, breaking covenants, and the like. We have learned that these are the qualities of good policies".
Let’s spread that lesson further so that the Doha resolve can actually revive hope. Those of you living near the UN headquarters know today very well how much hope can even beat the power of money.
Thank you