The World Social Forum prefers to define itself as "an open space – plural, diverse, non-governmental and non-partisan – that stimulates the decentralized debate, reflection, proposal building, experiences exchange and alliances among movements and organizations engaged in concrete action towards a more solidary, democratic and fair world; a permanent space and process to build alternatives to neoliberalism.

The World Social Forum first met in 2001, but it had its roots in Latin American activism, namely the encuentro, a meeting which emphasizes dialogue and exchange of ideas among activists.

"[7][8] Another one of the founders of the WSF, Cándido Grzybowski has said of the annual meetings, "The numerous recent crises are expressions of the contradictions and limitations of the form of global capitalism that has been imposed on humanity and the earth.

"[9] Since 2001, the United Nations has had a presence at the WSF through UNESCO, showing the institutional credibility achieved by the forum, seen by UNESCO as a "prime opportunity for dialogue and a laboratory of ideas for the renewal of public policies" through "critical reflection on the future of societies we want to create and for elaborating proposals in search of solidarity, justice, peace and human rights".

Some credit this meeting of World Social Forum for the connections that made the global day of action on February 15, 2003 so successful.

It was the first meeting of the World Social Forum held outside Brazil and its success has encouraged the WSF to expand in scope across the global South.

The 2004 meeting also saw the convening of the General Assembly of the Global Anti-War Movement, an idea that originated from the Asian Social Forum in November 2003, and broadly coalesced in response to the invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003.

Since Article 6 of the World Social Forum's Charter of Principles bars the event from attempting to represent all participants through formal statements, the Porto Alegre Manifesto was released on behalf of 19 activists.

This 'Group of 19' includes Aminata Traoré, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Eduardo Galeano, José Saramago, François Houtart, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Armand Mattelart, Roberto Savio, Riccardo Petrella, Ignacio Ramonet, Bernard Cassen, Samir Amin, Atilio Borón, Samuel Ruiz García, Tariq Ali, Frei Betto, Emir Sader, Walden Bello, and Immanuel Wallerstein.

[13] The sixth World Social Forum was "polycentric", held in January 2006 in Caracas, Venezuela and Bamako, Mali, and in March 2006, in Karachi, Pakistan.

The ninth World Social Forum took place in the Brazilian city of Belém, located in the Amazon rainforest, between January 27 and February 1, 2009.

Various stateless ethnic groups represented were the Basques, Kurds, Palestinians, Roma, Tibetans, Mapuche, Saharawi and Australian Aborigines.

[34] Preliminary data from the World Social Forum reported attendance from 500 organizations, 2,080 participants, and over 31,230 online visitors.

All of the various social forums in this mold include international attendees and are in no way specifically focused on the problems of a single region of country.

On January 26, 2001 a number of activists with Brazil's Movimento dos Sem-Terra (MST) reacted in protest to the growing role of Monsanto in global agribusiness, which was considered by the group to be unethically using their seed patents to harm the rights of rural peoples, tore up an experimental plot of transgenic crops in Não-me-Toque, 300 kilometres (190 mi) from Porto Alegre, where the World Social Forum was taking place at the time.

Three days later, Jose Bove, a French citizen, was arrested by Brazilian authorities as the World Social Forum ended on January 29, 2001.

[42][43][44] A delegation from the South Africa-based Abahlali baseMjondolo criticised the event's 2009 iteration as "dominated by" non-governmental organizations.

[43] The 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya was criticized as an "NGO fair" by Firoze Manji, as he believed that the large number of international NGOs crowded out less formal groups of activists.

[44] Raúl Zibechi argues that there is a "crisis" of the World Social Forum in that it has been "weakened" as it has been "taken over" by "those who were most capable of 'leading' assemblies, professionals from universities and NGOs.

Mngxitama also describes how popular organizations in the global South are systematically marginalized or included in a deeply subordinated manner.

[48] As of 2020[update], preparatory meetings for the 2021 World Social Forum were run by a younger generation of female and male organisers while the founders (Oded Grajew and Chico Whiteker) usually did not intervene.