The World Political Forum was the original idea of the Nobel Prize Laureate Mikhail Gorbachev, with a specific mission: to foster contacts between politicians, scientists, high level personalities in the cultural and religious life of different continents, faiths, languages and cultures, in order to analyse the issue of interdependence, but above all to suggest solutions for the problems of the governance of globalisation and the crucial problems that affect humankind today.
The current international order has become unhinged and unstable. Supranational political and economic institutions are ridden with conflict and disagreement between their members. The co-operation between states and the new world order hoped for at the end of the Cold War has failed to transpire. International affairs are now characterised, instead, by world disorder, as recent events have exacerbated fundamental differences of opinion across the globe.
The World Political Forum seeks to examine how to arrange the best possible co-ordination of international institutions and what models for future order are desirable and achievable to reduce these imbalances and differences in the search for a new political space where civilisations can meet and come to an agreement to manage international disorder. Only determined and concerted multi-lateral and trans-societal effort by international actors can avert this spiral of disorder.
The World Political Forum seeks to become a meeting point and crossroads for cultures, religions, and leaders, an open forum for the whole world that, through analysis and discussion will give guidance and provide new solutions to global problems and strive toward a New World Civilisation and a framework for a democratic international order.
In its founding conference in May 2003 and inaugural working session in October 2003, in the symbolic cities of Alessandria and Turin, in the Italian region of Piedmont, the World Political Forum defined the path for a new culture of global peace. World leaders past and present responded to the invitation of President Gorbachev and the Italian sponsoring committee and assembled at the World Political Forum to seek out new solutions for the problems of the world and begin to construct the foundations for their resolution by examining the causes of world disorder and how best they can be managed or solved.
The Forum’s aim is to create a permanent structure for international political and cultural debate regarding the 21st century’s problems, dedicating particular attention to the inextricable geopolitical and economic interdependence between the different areas of the planet. It was resolved at the founding conference to continue the work of the World Political Forum in annual assemblies and regional sessions to examine the challenges of the new century. The WPF is not, however, just an annual meeting of eminent and authoritative personalities. Its founding members have proclaimed the intention to transform it into a fully-fledged international research centre based in the Bosco Marengo Complex, to deal with the themes of governance and globalisation.
The goal of the World Political Forum is to identify, through intense analysis and the exchange of diverse experiences, concrete and politically feasible solutions to the unprecedented challenges of the global and multi-polar world, opening the way towards a new civilisation.