World Basic Income at the World Social Forum

In March, World Basic Income joined 40,000 citizen activists from around the world at the World Social Forum 2018 in Salvador, Brazil.

WBI co-hosted three sessions in collaboration with the Brazilian basic income movement:

• Bolsa Familia and Basic Income in Brazil (in Portuguese)

• Basic Income from around the world (with contributions from Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Canada and Malawi)

• World Basic Income – what is it and how to get there

The sessions were well attended, and provided a much-needed opportunity for country movements to share learning from their campaigns.

Contributors from Brazil explained that a commitment to UBI is actually embedded in their constitution and that Bolsa Familia was introduced as a step towards it. The architect of these policies, former Senator Eduardo Suplicy, who presented at the Brazilian Basic Income meeting, lamented attacks on Bolsa Familia by the current Brazilian government.

Pablo Yanes of the Economic Commission for Latin America outlined the progress of UBI in Mexico, in particular the encouraging support for basic income from a current presidential candidate. Juan Urbina of the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies outlined the potential impact of UBI in Guatemala and its affordability given the small population.

Paul Harnett of World Basic Income suggested that many world problems were of an international nature, such as climate change, and that taxes to protect our planet should be paid into a fund to provide a basic income for all in the world.

This growing momentum on Basic Income built on the excellent work of the Canadian Basic Income movement at the World Social Forum in Canada in 2016. Basic Income is gaining ground as a realistic policy to address poverty internationally and it is hoped that it will now feature regularly at the World Social Forum, the largest gathering of civil society in the world.