Hundreds of ideas and projects were generated at Davos. Both conceptual ones which changed the principles of work of the whole sectors of economy, and real agreements which influenced the destinies of separate states.

• In 1988, exactly in Davos, the leaders of Greece and Turkey signed a declaration, which avoided open military conflict between the two countries and marked the beginning of the normalization of their relations.
• In 1992, South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk met with Nelson Mandela. It was their first meeting outside South Africa.
• In 1994, at the forum, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and the leader of the Palestinian liberation movement Yasser Arafat reached a preliminary agreement on the details of the creation of Palestinian autonomy.
• In 1998, the leaders of the world’s major powers met for the first time at the WEF, which soon formed the G-20, the “Big Twenty”.
• Kofi Annan, then Secretary General of the United Nations, in his speech at the forum in 1999, announced the creation of the UN Global Compact.

One can hardly count the number of smaller initiatives in the areas of education, environment, taxation, trade, etc., which were first presented at the WEF.

The forum year after year faces more and more acute criticism, which is often heard from the participants themselves. The main complaint – the event often resembles a pathos elitist club where world leaders and top businessmen discuss issues that concern them personally and only pro forma pay attention to topics such as global warming and the fight against economic inequality. According to Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, the solution to any problem for the forum’s leaders is reduced taxation for corporations and deregulation – those issues in which business has a vested interest.

The organizers respond by asserting that in today’s world, where liberal democracy and open economics suffer defeat after defeat, the ideas behind the WEF are more relevant than ever and invite “non-systemic” participants to the forum. “Elites have always existed. We bring influential people together and hope that they use their influence for good causes,” says Klaus Schwab.

The Davos 2020 Manifesto: Fair Pay Taxes, Protection of Human Rights, Equal Rules

In the 1970s, the idea of corporate social responsibility that the founder and CEO of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, pioneered seemed bold and even controversial. In an interview with the New York Times on the eve of the current forum, Schwab recalls that back then he had to wrestle with the popular approach of economist Milton Friedman, author of the “social responsibility of business is about maximizing its profits.”

“A lot has changed since then,” states the New York Times. The world’s biggest investors have been forced to recognize that they can’t just make money and are incorporating global ideas into their business strategies. Smaller companies are following suit, and the Davos Forum is no small part of that.

On the eve of this year’s Forum, the Davos Manifesto 2020 was published as a development and rethinking of the ideas laid down in the 1973 Manifesto. “The manifesto provides a vision of stakeholder capitalism, which addresses a number of important issues of our time, such as fair taxation, zero tolerance for corruption, executive pay and respect for human rights,” the organizers briefly describe the meaning of the document. According to them, it should define the world agenda for the next 50 years.

Based on the manifesto, the program of Davos-2020 was drawn up, which included six areas: the environment, economy, society, industry, technology and geopolitics. The organizers tried to fill these very general and streamlined terms with specific meaning.

The forum included 160 substantive initiatives. Among them we can highlight two: plant a billion trees around the world in the next ten years and train a billion people in professional skills necessary during the current “fourth industrial revolution. Schwab explicitly called the current forum “a workshop, not a talking shop.

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