The Role of Cooperatives in the Light of New Economic and Social Trends

Invites Governments, relevant international organizations, specialized agencies and national and international cooperative organizations to observe annually the International Day of Cooperatives on the first Saturday of July starting from 1995, as proclaimed by the General Assembly in its resolution 47/90;

Encourages Governments to consider fully the potential of cooperatives for contributing to the solution of economic, social and environmental problems in formulating national development strategies;

Also encourages Governments to consider reviewing legal and administrative constraints on the activities of cooperatives with a view to eliminating those constraints that are not applied to other businesses and enterprises;

Invites government agencies, in collaboration with cooperatives and other relevant organizations, to develop programmes aimed at improving statistics on the contribution of cooperatives to national economies and facilitating dissemination of information on cooperatives;

Invites the World Summit for Social Development, the Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace and the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), in formulating respective strategies and actions, to give due consideration to the role and contribution of cooperatives;

Requests the Secretary-General, within existing resources, to continue to provide support to the programmes and objectives of the international cooperative movement and to submit to the General Assembly at its fifty-first session a report on the implementation of the present resolution.