World Social Summit (WSS), Doha 2025

The Second World Summit for Social Development provides a crucial platform for advancing the recognition and inclusion of Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent (CDWD), who continue to face systemic exclusion and marginalization. For CDWD, the Summit represents an opportunity to bring global attention to the structural discrimination inherited through birth, occupation, and community, and to advocate for concrete commitments toward equality, dignity, and social justice.

Despite its scale and impact, this form of discrimination has not been adequately recognized as a key factor contributing to the lack of social inclusion and unequal access to public goods and services.

As the Global Forum of Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent (GFoD), we aim through our policy paper input to the World Social Summit to highlight how our communities continue to lag behind in the realization of the ten commitments of the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development. The report outlines the persistent challenges that hinder progress toward equality and inclusion, and presents our key recommendations for action to ensure that the rights, dignity, and development priorities of CDWD are fully recognized and integrated into global and national social development agendas.

In addition, GFoD, The Inclusivity Project (TIP), and our partners are organizing a series of events during the Summit, including a Solutions Session, featured events in the NGO Forum, and an exhibition. These activities will provide vital spaces for community representatives — including Dalit, Roma, Haratine, Quilombola, Palenque, and other descent-based groups — to share their lived experiences, express their priorities, and propose solutions for achieving genuine social inclusion and justice.