This week, from April 7 to 10, the city of São Paulo will host one of the most significant meetings on the progressive spectrum: the conference Dilemmas of Humanity: Perspectives for Social Transformation to discuss ways out of the current crisis of capitalism. More than 70 intellectuals, political leaders and social movement leaders from all over the world will be at the event, which will take place at Pontifical Catholic University in São Paulo and Sesc Pompeia. The event will be open to the general public.
The conference is organized by the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST, in Portuguese), the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA). Now in its fourth edition, the meeting aims to discuss and propose concrete economic and social solutions to the various crises caused by capitalism and neoliberalism worldwide, as well as take action to combat hunger, social inequalities and the environmental crisis.
The event returns to Brazil this year after an edition held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in October 2023, which reaffirmed the demand for a popular and alternative project of society, built by peoples who have been fighting to overcome capitalism and imperialism.
The first two editions took place in Rio de Janeiro in 2004 and at the Florestan Fernandes National School (ENFF, in Portuguese) in Guararema, in the state of São Paulo, in 2015. MST organized both editions. The conference in Guararema gave rise to the International Peoples’ Assembly and other instruments for internationalist political articulation.
The opening ceremony, which will feature Brazil’s Minister of Economy, Fernando Haddad, will take place at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), on the Perdizes Campus, from 6 pm on. In addition to Haddad, several other authorities, leaders and intellectuals, such as Vijay Prashad (India), director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, will also attend the event. From April 8 to 10, the debates will take place at Sesc Pompeia.
The participants include some of the leading names in the economic debate and political figures, such as economist Josefina Morales from Mexico, Russian Yaroslav Lissovolik (Russia’s advisor to the IMF and founder of BRICS+ Analytics), Marcio Pochmann (Director of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, also known as IBGE), João Pedro Stedile (founding member of the MST), Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr. (former vice-president of the New Development Bank, the BRICS Bank), Pedro Rossi (vice-president of the Global Fund for a New Economy), Argentine sociologist Claudio Katz, Brazil’s Minister of Management and Innovation Esther Dweck, among others.
General information
Opening of the event
Date: April 7
At the auditorium 239 of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), Ministro Godói St., 969, at 7 p.m.
Dilemmas of Humanity Conference
Date: April 8 to 10, 2025, 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
At Sesc Pompeia Theater
Clélia St., 93, Água Branca – in the city of São Paulo
