The United Nations (UN) General Assembly has adopted a new resolution on cooperatives in social development calling for the proclamation of 2025 as an International Year of Cooperatives.
The text encourages all member states, as well as the United Nations and all other relevant stakeholders, to take advantage of the International Year of Cooperatives as a way of promoting cooperatives and raising awareness of their contribution to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and to overall social and economic development. The resolution was presented by the Government of Mongolian and adopted on 3 November during the 47th plenary meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.
The initiative comes after the success of the first International Year of Cooperatives in 2012, which highly contributed to raise awareness of the important role of cooperatives in promoting sustainable development.
The resolution further draws governments’ attention to the recommendations of the 2023 UN Secretary General report on cooperatives in social development, to focus support on cooperatives as sustainable and successful business enterprises by strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem for cooperatives enabling them to further contribute directly to:
- decent employment generation,
- poverty and hunger eradication,
- education,
- social protection – including universal health coverage -,
- financial inclusion and
- the creation of affordable housing options across a variety of economic sectors in urban and rural areas.
The text also recommends reviewing existing legislation and regulations to make the national legal and regulatory environment more conducive to the creation and growth of cooperatives by improving existing laws and regulations and/or by establishing new ones, especially in the areas of access to capital, autonomy, competitiveness and fair taxation.
In addition, the resolution calls member states to consult cooperatives in the preparations for the voluntary national reviews for the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. It also invites governments, relevant international organisations, the specialised agencies and local, national and international cooperative organisations to continue to observe the International Day of Cooperatives annually, on the first Saturday of July, as proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in its resolution 47/90.
Shaun Tarbuck, Chief Executive, ICMIF, said: “I am delighted that the United Nations has approved the resolution for an International Year of Cooperatives in 2025. Insurance is the biggest sector within the cooperative movement. ICMIF represents over 200 cooperative and mutual insurers in 60 countries around the world.
“This could be significantly more if there were cooperative legislation in the 40% of the UN Nation States that currently do not permit the establishment of either cooperative or mutual insurers.
“Our latest research shows that cooperatives and mutuals have a 32.2% market share in developed markets but only 2.6% in developing markets. This is a critical protection gap that we need to close. I hope that the UN nation states that don’t currently permit cooperatives or mutuals will use the IYC 2025 to close the gap and recognise the value of cooperatives in both social development and country development,” Tarbuck concluded.
The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), in which ICMIF represents the insurance sector, celebrated the adoption of this resolution, welcoming its recommendations, and encourages all stakeholders involved in the promotion and advancement of cooperatives to implement them.
The President of the ICA, Ariel Guarco, welcomed the adoption of the new UN resolution on cooperatives, saying: “the proclamation of a new International Year of Cooperatives, 13 years after the first one, proves the strong recognition by the UN and national governments of the capacity of cooperatives to push forward the Agenda 2030 and build a fairer and more prosperous world for everyone.”
The recommendations in this new UN resolution are well aligned with ICA’s requests to the governments and development partners as stated in its recent position paper ICA policy paper “Cooperatives: Key partners in realising the Agenda 2030 for sustainable development”.
