An estimated 100,000 people from 54 countries will be protesting in Genoa when leaders of the G8 industrialised nations meet. While the heads of government will be discussing ways of advancing globalisation, the protesters will be demanding a more humane economic order which puts human dignity before corporate profits.

The Italian government has identified 700 protest groups due to arrive in Genoa, covering every conceivable abuse committed against a human being, anywhere in the world.

The Genoa Social Forum, an umbrella body of organisers, has invited speakers from around the world to outline an alternative vision for a sustainable global economy.

Globalise Resistance (GR), an alliance of Irish activists, has held weekly planning sessions, with 160 activists travelling by bus, ferry and air from Cork, Galway, Derry, Limerick, Belfast and Dublin.

The Irish protesters include socialists, greens, anarchists, Travellers, republicans and debt protesters, all anxious to witness the greatest convergence of disaffected Europeans since 1968. The group's website, http://globaliseresistance.cjb.net explains the issues and promises prearranged accommodation in campsites and hostels.

"Events like Seattle, Prague and Genoa are important as they raise awareness of how little control we have over our lives," said Joe Moore, a Cork trade unionist who attended the final GR meeting in Liberty Hall on Thursday.

Mr Moore, president of the Cork City Trades Council, was selected by union colleagues to represent 25,000 workers from local unions affiliated to the ICTU. "Something is stirring all over Europe, drawing together people in struggle from around the globe," he said.

The Irish contingent will protest against global poverty, GM foods, climate change, Third World debt, patenting of genes and seeds and the general feeling that global business power is out of control.

Dozens more Irish people will make their own way to Genoa, including Una Ni Chiosain, an enterprise worker based in Dingle, Co Kerry. "The poorest countries in the world have no money to spend on health or education as their money is spent on debt repayments to the richest countries in the world," she said.

Dianne O'Brien, a single parent living in Co Clare, is also travelling to the protest, having saved up small amounts of cash to fund the trip. "They're taking the lifeblood from any country they can, poor nations whose people are considered second-class citizens," she said.

She believes the violence which has accompanied previous protests has the potential to kill off the vibrant, emerging movement. "People have to suppress a huge amount of anger in their daily lives, and when they come face to face with what they see as the cause of their suffering then they get angry," she said.

Irish protesters will receive a special welcome after the success of the recent No vote in the Nice referendum, which placed a spotlight on the growing militarisation of the EU trade bloc.

"I'm going because of the way the Irish neo-liberal Government treated the teachers," said James Redmond (18), who has just finished his Leaving Cert. The Genoa protesters will engage in a collective blockade of the conference site, using mass body power as a weapon to shut down the conference.

One of the most powerful campaigns represented at Genoa will be Attac, an organisation set up in France to promote the Tobin Tax, a proposed charge on currency transactions. Every day currency markets shift two trillion dollars, as dealers buy and sell money in order to make a profit from fluctuations in exchange rates between currencies.

These "currency gamblers" can destroy a developing economy in seconds, grabbing the profits for the banks and hedge funds that employ them, say the protesters. They would like to see a 0.5 per cent tax on such transactions, which would provide $250 billion in revenue.

This week the Belgian government agreed to put the Tobin Tax initiative on the discussion agenda for its current Presidency of the European Union, a hint that persistent street pressure can pay off.

The Italian government has invited a group of Third World leaders of "unquestioned moral authority" to act as buffers between protesters and police, including Nelson Mandela and Rigoberta Menchu, Guatemala's Nobel Peace prizewinner. However, their presence has been dismissed as payback for favours owed to global leaders.

In a less public move, the Italian government begged the radical singer, Manu Chao, to join their buffer team, sensing that his word might carry more weight than even Mandela. He declined, preferring to lead a march of migrants through Genoa.

It then called on a group known as the Monos Blancos, or "white monkeys", to help them police the protest, but they, too, refused. The Monos Blancos push non-violent civil disobedience to the limit, wearing white overalls and using bizarre weaponry, including cardboard tanks and water pistols.

"We have a pact with the city and the citizens of Genoa. Not a single shop window will be broken by us, not a single offensive gesture made to the people," said the Monos Blancos this week. "We must win citizen support to stop the G8 summit."

The summit leaders are expected to take to the high seas to avoid confrontation with the protesters, but even that may not be sufficient as the protest ship Constanta sails into Genoa next week. The Constanta is a converted Romanian navy helicopter carrier, refitted as a peace and solidarity vessel.