By Anca Voinea
Earlier this month the global co-operative movement met in Manchester and Rochdale to celebrate the International Year of Cooperatives, with events organised by the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), Co-operatives UK and the UK’s Co-op Group.
Throughout the week, UK and international participants were buzzing with enthusiasm. As well as paying tribute to the legacy of the Rochdale Pioneers, they talked of what is yet to come, full of pride and a renewed confidence in the power of co-operation. This is no little achievement, given the current state of world politics, as well as the difficulty the UK and global co-op movements have had in the past when seeking to speak with a single voice.
“I believe we took a big step forward today,” ICA president, Ariel Guarco, told Co-op News after the apex’s General Assembly. “In such difficult moments, people-centred businesses which form part of the economic model promoted by co-operatives, are a real alternative that many others view as a possible response to global challenges.”
Guarco sees the ICA role as the voice of the global co-op movement tasked with representing co-ops at an international level while defending their co-operative identity, promoting co-operative policies and regulations and enabling the sector to access opportunities to develop beyond borders. But there’s more to it, he explains.
“We are active internationally but also managing businesses locally, trying to ensure each of our communities sees the difference when a co-op exists. So I think this is the contribution we can make, from local to global, understanding that we have global challenges but that responses are within each of our co-ops and each of our communities,” he added.
The apex recently adopted a new strategy for 2026-2030 which, said Guarco, will be used to build on the IYC momentum, to ensure it lasts beyond 2025.
“The year 2025 presents a valuable opportunity for the global co-operative movement,” he added, “especially the ICA, the mutual home of all co-operators, to strengthen its visibility, expand its model, and engage more effectively with national governments and from there align with the UN’s call for action, leveraging governments’ normative, fiscal, and political tools to support and scale co-operative development and growth.”
The year is also an opportunity to better engage with national governments to ensure countries have the adequate regulatory and fiscal environments and policies for co-ops to develop and thrive.
Recent initiatives by the ICA include the launch of a co-operative and mutual leadership circle – CM50 – bringing together leaders of some of the world’s largest co-ops and mutuals who are working together on a joint commitment plan ahead of the UN’s World Social Summit while engaging with their respective governments and to ensure they support the plan.
“The Second UN Social Summit, which will take place between 4-6 November in Doha, Qatar, 30 years after the first summit which was in Copenhagen, is an important event and we think the voice of co-operatives needs to be loud, strong, clear and unique. We are preparing a lot for this,” said Guarco.
Co-operatives will also aim to influence discussions at the this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP30, in Belém, Brazil, from 10 to 21 November.
Guarco thinks the UN’s recognition of co-operatives, by declaring 2025 as the Second International Year of Cooperatives, after the first year in 2012, shows the movement has withstood the test of time and continues to provide solutions to challenges faced by communities worldwide.
“To have two UN International Years of Co-operatives in just 13 years is a huge recognition,” he added, “and being able to be here where it all began, with the vision those 28 pioneers had to set up a co-op to address the challenges they face – at a time when the industrial revolution was leaving the majority of people out of the system – but also they thought that through their contributions, something much greater was emerging, an economic, social, cultural, ad environmental model capable of transforming society.
“This was the legacy they left and this is what we are trying to achieve every day, working for a better society for a more just, equal, peaceful, equal and inclusive world, with more solidarity, this is a world we all want to build and one which we all deserve.”
-CoopNews