Systemic Transformation Is Now, or Never: 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum Steering Committee Meets in Sri Lanka
May 5–9, 2025 | Negombo, Sri Lanka
The Global Steering Committee (GSC) of the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum convened in Sri Lanka alongside the national organizing committee this week, laying the foundation for a historic convergence of more than 50 international organizations working for food sovereignty, climate justice, feminism, and economic transformation.
Held from May 5 to 9, this strategic gathering marked a major milestone ahead of the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, which will bring together over 500 grassroots activists and movement leaders from around the world in September 2025 in Kandy, Sri Lanka.
Under the urgent call to action — Systemic Transformation Is Now, or Never — participants united around a shared commitment to challenge the root causes of overlapping global crises: hunger, debt, climate, patriarchy, and corporate power.
Why Sri Lanka? A Frontline of Crisis and Resistance
Sri Lanka is a country shaped by crippling debt, tariff liberalization, and decades of neoliberal economic policies — policies that have deepened inequality and devastated public services. The country’s foreign debt crisis, exacerbated by IMF-led austerity and structural adjustment programs, has slashed state support for health, education, and food systems like in many other countries in the world.
Tariff reductions have flooded local markets with cheap imports, threatening the survival of small-scale farmers and producers. Meanwhile, transnational corporations — particularly in the garment, agriculture, and extractive sectors — continue to exploit labor, extract resources, and degrade the environment.
The garment industry, a pillar of Sri Lanka’s export economy, employs thousands of women under inhumane and precarious conditions. These workers — often the sole breadwinners for their families — face long hours, poor wages, unsafe environments, and virtually no labor protections.
From water privatization to land grabs, from militarization to gender-based violence, women in Sri Lanka — especially in rural and marginalized communities — are bearing the brunt of intersecting injustices. Yet, in the face of repression and exploitation, Sri Lankan social movements have shown remarkable resistance. After ousting a neoliberal regime, they are actively building systemic alternatives rooted in justice, sustainability, and collective power.
A Forum of Global Solidarity and Concrete Proposals
The 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum will be a grassroots political convergence.
From agroecology and food sovereignty to feminist economy and debt resistance, participants will bring real, grounded proposals to confront today’s overlapping crises. In turn, Sri Lankan movements will offer their powerful experiences and lessons from the front lines of resistance and recovery.
Now Is the Time
The struggles faced by Sri Lanka are not isolated. They are mirrored across the Global South. But so are the solutions. The 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum is a call to build collective power from below, to advance systemic alternatives, and to reclaim our rights, lands, food, and futures.
The time to act is now. Systemic Transformation is Now, or Never.