Cooperatives in Social Development

Encourages all Member States, as well as the United Nations and all other relevant stakeholders, to share best practices identified through activities implemented during the International Year of Cooperatives and to continue those activities, as appropriate;

Encourages Governments, as appropriate, to provide targeted budgetary support to scale up the capacity of cooperatives, promote them, in particular those led by the poor, young people, women, older persons, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities and those in vulnerable situations, as well as include them in sectoral strategies, such as agriculture, health, education and employment;

Also encourages Governments, as appropriate, to consult with cooperatives as part of their preparations for their voluntary national reviews for the high-level political forum on sustainable development;

Invites Governments and international organizations, in partnership with cooperatives and cooperative organizations, to strengthen and build the capacity of all forms of cooperatives, especially those run by the poor, young people, women, older persons, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities and those in vulnerable situations, so that they can empower people to transform their lives and communities positively and build inclusive societies, and to ensure the full, equal and meaningful participation of women and young people in cooperatives, in particular in their decision-making processes;

Invites Governments to strengthen efforts to enhance food security and nutrition to foster sustainable production and consumption, to promote the progressive realization of the right to adequate food and to focus efforts on smallholders and women farmers, as well as on agricultural and food cooperatives and farmers’ networks, supported by measures to improve access to markets and financial capital, create enabling domestic and international environments and strengthen collaboration across the many initiatives in this area, including regional initiatives;

Also invites Governments, in collaboration with cooperative organizations and relevant stakeholders, to promote conditions for financial cooperatives to effectively perform as relevant instruments of access to affordable finance and for local economic development;

Encourages Governments to promote access to information and communications technologies as a vital channel for collaboration and the expansion of cooperatives, especially in rural areas, working towards closing the digital divides, including for all women and girls, persons with disabilities and older persons;

Also encourages Governments to intensify and expand the availability, accessibility and dissemination of evidence-based research on the operations and contribution of cooperatives, to develop a statistical framework for the systematic collection of comprehensive and disaggregated data on and the best practices of cooperative enterprises, taking into consideration available methodologies, such as the guidelines concerning statistics of cooperatives, in collaboration with all stakeholders, and to raise public awareness of the linkages between cooperatives and sustainable development, especially in the areas of social inclusion, decent employment creation, poverty eradication in all its forms and dimensions, inequality reduction, gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, and peacebuilding;

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

Invites Governments, in collaboration with the cooperative movement, to develop programmes aimed at enhancing the capacity-building of cooperatives, including by strengthening the organizational, management and financial skills of their members, while respecting the principles of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, and to introduce and support programmes to improve the access of cooperatives to new technologies;

Encourages Governments to take appropriate measures to adopt or develop legislation and policies that provide women with equal access to land and support women’s cooperatives and agricultural programmes and enable women’s cooperatives to benefit from public and private sector procurement processes and increase trade;

Requests the Secretary-General, in cooperation with the relevant United Nations and other international organizations and national, regional and international cooperative organizations, to continue to render support to Member States, as appropriate, in their efforts to create a supportive environment for the development of cooperatives, integrating cooperative values, principles and business models into educational programming, including school curricula, as appropriate, providing assistance for human resources development, technical advice and training and promoting an exchange of experience and best practices through, inter alia, conferences, workshops and seminars at the national and regional levels, within existing resources;

Also requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its eighty-second session a report on the implementation of the present resolution.