(Islamabad, 19 September 2020): WDF attended the inaugural session of the ‘Progressive International’. WDF was represented by our president comrade Ismat Shahjahan. Given limitations of an online summit, there were multiple groups in many languages. We attended the English-speaking group. Member organizations held strategic discussion on “Building a New International”. Our official statement is given below.
Progressive International is a coalition of left-leaning thinkers, activists, organizations, and political leaders from around the world – a new global effort aimed to provide the world with an alternative to the ravages of neoliberal capitalism, gross economic inequality, and corporate domination.
OUR OFFICIAL STATEMENT
Revolutionary greetings from Pakistan!
Comrades,
We, at the Women Democratic Front (WDF), welcome the foundation of the Progressive International and support the foundational principles of its establishment.
The WDF believes that a new international must recognise the disastrous consequences of imperialism on the Global South, particularly as it relates to war, indebtedness, climate change, and political engineering. Our region has been converted into a battle ground for imperialist proxy wars, our country has become a cantonment on rent, and we are literally forced to pay for our own oppression, killings, genocides and femicides. The satanic mills of imperialist wars and arms must be closed!
Imperial wars and regime change also continue to mitigate the development of organic resistance to capitalism and strengthen the forces of reaction and militarism in the Global South. Crushing levels of indebtedness wrought by collusion between international financial institutions and local elites continues to hamper the fiscal and regulatory capacity of states to address the basic needs of their people.
WDF also believes that an anti-imperialist internationalism is central to the fight against climate change, given the reality of the unequal historical basis of climate change and the continuing ecological imperialism and environmental sabotage for profit in the Global South, even as the poorest countries bear the brunt of the fallout of ecological breakdown.
We also stress the importance of the need to centre the perspectives and representation of women in the new international to address destructive past imbalances. It is critical that the interlocking interlinkages between patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism and colonialism are foregrounded in our analysis and collective action so that we can avoid the pitfalls of insular , parochial and patriarchal state nationalism that have dogged past attempts at leftwing internationalism.
We believe that the task of the international is to unite the global Left across nations and geographies by linking their pain and trauma, inspirations, and aspirations for a better world to create new revolutionary, cohesive and active global collective. We believe that only an international with eco-socialism and socialist-feminism at its core would be able to lead the global Left to power, in order to create a better future for humanity and the planet.
We look forward to work together with the Left across the world, to build the new progressive international.
Thank you.
