Durban - Durban would, with the forthcoming third World Social Sciences Forum (WSSF2015), play host to delegates from more than 50 countries and speakers, the Human Sciences Research Council said on Monday.
Speakers scheduled to speak at the forum include the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) director general, Irina Bokova.
Themed “Transforming Global Relations for a Just World”, delegates would debate the future development of people around the globe at the forum. The forum would be taking place in Durban from September 13 - 16, ten days before the drafting of the United Nations’ Post-2015 Development Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Bokova would deliver the keynote address at the opening of the forum. Ministers from participating countries and the likes of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Professor Jomo Kwama Sundaram, Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Professor Jayati Ghosh, and executive director of the African Arts Institute Mike van Graan would also speak at the forum.
“We are trying to understand the cultural dimensions of development,” said Van Graan of his focus at the forum. “How do you pursue development and how do you understand development, both itself as a cultural construct, but also in the context of societies where culture is an important player?”
Additional areas to be covered at the forum would be gender, violence, climate change, poverty and citizenship, ethics, and the challenges and opportunities for overcoming global inequality.
ANA