International Day of Cooperatives

This year, the International Day of Cooperatives is celebrated on 3 July 2021 as “Rebuild better together”. Cooperatives around the world will showcase how they are meeting the COVID-19 pandemic crisis with solidarity and resilience and offering communities a people-centred and environmentally just recovery.

#CoopsDay will be the occasion to spread the word about how a human-centred business model, sustained by the cooperative values of self-help and solidarity and the ethical values of social responsibility and concern for community, can reduce inequality, create shared prosperity.

About the International Day

The United Nations International Day of Cooperatives is celebrated annually on the first Saturday of July. The aim of this celebration is to increase awareness on cooperatives, highlight the complementary goals and objectives of the United Nations and the international cooperative movement, underscore the contributions of the movement to the resolution of the major problems addressed by the United Nations and strengthen and extend partnerships between the international cooperative movement and other actors.

In 1992, following a concerted lobbying effort by the cooperative members of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) and COPAC members, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the International Day of Cooperatives by the UN by resolution 47/90 of 16 December 1992.

The date of the celebration of the International Day was chosen to coincide with the already existing International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) International Cooperative Day with has been celebrated since 1923.

In 1994, the United Nations General Assembly adopted another resolution 49/151 of 23 December 1994 on cooperatives, which not only called on governments and international agencies to:

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

but also invited

“…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”.

The theme and slogan are generally selected in the first quarter of the year by COPAC.

Past #Coopsday slogans