The 27th G8 summit was held in Genoa, Italy, on 20–22 July 2001 and is remembered as a highpoint of the worldwide anti-globalization movement as well as for human rights violations against demonstrators.
Overview
The Group of Seven (G7) was an unofficial forum which brought together the heads of the richest industrialized countries: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada starting in 1976. The G8, meeting for the first time in 1997, was formed with the addition of Russia. In addition, the President of the European Commission has been formally included in summits since 1981. The summits were not meant to be linked formally with wider international institutions; and in fact, a mild rebellion against the stiff formality of other international meetings was a part of the genesis of cooperation between France's president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and West Germany's chancellor Helmut Schmidt as they conceived the initial summit of the Group of Six (G6) in 1975.
The G8 summits during the 21st-century have inspired widespread debates, protests and demonstrations; and the two-or three-day event becomes more than the sum of its parts, elevating the participants, the issues, and the venue as focal points for activist pressure.
Leaders at the summit
The 27th G8 summit was the first summit for Japanese Prime Minister Junichirō Koizumi and US President George W. Bush.
Participants
These summit participants were the current "core members" of the international forum:
Priorities
Traditionally, the host country of the G8 summit sets the agenda for negotiations, which take place primarily amongst multi-national civil servants in the weeks before the summit itself, leading to a joint declaration which all countries can agree to sign.
Issues
The summit was intended as a venue for resolving differences among its members. As a practical matter, the summit was also conceived as an opportunity for its members to give each other mutual encouragement in the face of difficult economic decisions.
The overall theme of the summit was ways to reduce poverty. Topics discussed at the meeting included an evaluation of the Enhanced HIPC Initiative which involved debt forgiveness to Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, the Global Health Fund, the global digital divide, the environment, and food security. Although the main summit was from July 20 to the 22nd, the summit was preceded by a meeting of the G8 foreign ministers on the 18th and 19th.
The summit was overshadowed by riots in the city after a crackdown by police targeting anti-globalisation groups and the death of 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani, leading some to talk of a deliberately followed strategy of tension.
Before the summit, significant controversies and ridicule among local people and media focused on the security plans (such as fences going through streets and inside houses) and image provisions (such as the prohibition to dry up the laundry).
Citizens' responses and authorities' counter-responses
Protests
The Genoa G8 Summit protest, from July 18 to July 22, 2001, was a dramatic protest, drawing an estimated 200,000 demonstrators. Dozens were hospitalized following clashes with police and night raids by security forces on two schools housing activists and independent journalists. People taken into custody after the raids have alleged severe abuse at the hands of police.
Demonstrators accused the police of brutality and denying them their right to non-violent protest. They believe that G8 summits are non-legitimate attempts by eight of the world's most powerful governments to set the rules for the planet at large. Police and many politicians argued that attempting to blockade a meeting is in itself a violent event and an attempt to impede the workings of democratically elected governments..