Cesare Ottolini - Italy

I am the national President of Unione Inquilini, one of the oldest organizations of tenants and one of the most deeply rooted in Italy, militating also at the international level since 1989. At the moment, I am also the coordinator of the International Alliance of Inhabitants (IAI).

It is a global network of organizations and social movements of inhabitants, communities, tenants, home owners, homeless persons, persons living in shacks, cooperatives, native peoples and working-class districts, constituted in Madrid on September 12, 2003.

The IAI is based on a Charter of Founding Principles, which highlights the importance of reinforcing the voice of the voiceless, from the local level to the global, as a strategic tool to build and to strengthen links of indispensable solidarity to protect the rights of inhabitants to be builders and users of cities. Our objective is therefore the construction of another possible world starting with the conquest of the right to housing and to the city. The IAI is part of the processes promoted by the World Citizens Assembly for a Responsible and United World and by the World Social Forum. Present with its members in all continents, the IAI is managed by a Coordination Committee composed by organizations of inhabitants, while NGOs back this process with a Technical Support Committee.

The IAI organized and participated in many initiatives in collaboration with other organizations and networks, in particular with regard to the alterglobalization movement, producing documents and launching campaigns, and particularly the "Zero Evictions" campaign. Finally, we are setting up the People’s Urban University, aiming to encourage research and the voice of inhabitants-militants of a new type, feet well-anchored in the local fabric and head very conscious of the challenges of neoliberal globalization in the cities.

On these bases, open to collaboration with other networks and key persons of Alliance 21, we are preparing the calendar for the WSF 2005.

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