Something many of us do not know about UBUNTU....

"The last thing I want is that any of our descendents should look back in some years and despise us for not daring to act when we had so much capacity to act. We must dare to seek the how, the why and the what for of our agreements. We shall thus be able to join together to look for alternative solutions and new ways of managing the world's challenges. Being diverse is our richness, acting together will be our strength".

(Federico Mayor, 2 April 2001 at the inaugural meeting of UBUNTU).

UBUNTU is an age-old African term for humaneness - for caring, sharing and being in harmony with all creation. As an ideal it promotes cooperation between individuals, cultures and nations.

At the end of 2000, Federico Mayor made a call to the different actors in civil society around the world

"The 21st century is faced with a process of "globalisation" in which agreements, mergers and joint endeavour in the international networks of the big financial, industrial and service industries enormously influence the whole world. This situation has made it necessary for another actor on the world scene, the so-called "civil society", to establish worldwide links so as to be able to influence the issues on the world agenda that affect it each day to an extraordinary degree. Thus, as many voices as possible should unite to attain sufficient magnitude to be heard and to bring about an interaction that would favour the presence of a "more human sense" in political, social, economic and cultural actions on a worldwide scale. The main objective is to join forces, to construct bridges of dialogue and communication between personalities and intellectuals, international organisations and institutions, people from the university and media spheres etc., who are primarily concerned with working for peace, democracy, sustainable development, human dignity and human rights and who, working together to defend these great principles, might open up a favourable dialogue with other actors in the international arena so that this debate might eventually have an important part to play on the world stage. The aim is to create a network of networks, a movement of movements in which, united yet diverse, all these elements can jointly weave structures and forums of opinion and encounters that make it possible to work for the values and principles that sustain life in a democracy, thereby attaining true human development on a worldwide scale that ensures both harmony with nature and cultural diversity."

This call has led to the scheduling of two constitutive meetings (April 2001 and March 2002), covering a period that has been particularly rich in events concerning civil society. At the first meeting it was decided to create the WORLD FORUM OF NETWORKS OF CIVIL SOCIETY - UBUNTU. UBUNTU is an age-old African term for humaneness - for caring, sharing and being in harmony with all creation. As an ideal it promotes cooperation between individuals, cultures and nations. This decision was confirmed at the second meeting and the project has gone ahead at different institutional and operative levels. The desire that the Forum should be a pro-active (prospective and propositive) voice for placing the human being at the centre of all political, economic and social decisions has also been accentuated.