The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) played a prominent role at the United Nations World Summit for Social Development held in early November in Doha (Qatar). Its presence was especially notable during the high-level round table titled “Strengthening the Three Pillars of Social Development: Poverty Eradication, Full and Productive Employment, Decent Work for All, and Social Inclusion,” held on 4 November. The session brought together more than forty Heads of State and Government, 170 ministerial representatives, leaders of international organizations, youth, and civil society, totaling 14,000 delegates from around the globe.
As an ECOSOC-accredited organization, the ICA had the opportunity to address this global forum. Its president, Ariel Guarco, closed the round table on behalf of the one billion cooperators who make up the international cooperative movement. During his address, he recalled that 2025 has been declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Cooperatives, an occasion that, he stressed, enables the movement to bring bold perspectives on social development and to reflect collectively on a sustainable future.
The ICA president highlighted the scale of the challenge of eradicating poverty, noting that more than one billion people live in conditions that involve not only a lack of basic resources but also extremely precarious environments that directly affect their health and life expectancy.
Guarco pointed out that such precariousness is often linked to violence, forced displacement, and increased exposure to natural disasters. He acknowledged, starkly, that poverty also leads to death. He argued that reversing this situation depends not only on the ability to provide assistance but also on accurately identifying the structural causes that perpetuate it. In this regard, he warned that any debate on the role of cooperatives in social inclusion would be insufficient if the dominant global economic paradigm continues to produce more exclusion.
He also emphasized that decent work is the best instrument for restoring the social and productive fabric damaged in many regions of the world. However, he argued that only a productive economy rooted in local communities, guided by principles and values, and oriented toward the common good can guarantee sustainable outcomes. In this sense, he affirmed that cooperatives inherently embody these attributes: they are not — he insisted — enterprises that occasionally practice social responsibility, but social responsibility turned into a business model.
The ICA president stressed that the cooperative movement does not seek to act as a mere “ambulance service” tending to the victims of other economic systems. Its greatest virtue, he stated, lies not only in its capacity to include those who have been marginalized but also to prevent their marginalisation in the first place. He advocated for a new global economy that allows each community to develop autonomously and democratically, in cooperation with others, as the definitive path toward a just, sustainable, and peaceful world.
Cooperatives, Key Drivers of Social and Sustainable Development
On the same day, as part of the World Summit for Social Development, the official closing ceremony of the International Year of Cooperatives 2025 was held.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres participated in the Summit, whose conclusions reaffirm — and update in light of current challenges — the principles of the 1995 Copenhagen Declaration and the 2030 Agenda, calling on governments to move from commitments to effective action: generating formal employment, expanding universal social protection, combating structural inequalities, and ensuring that no one is left behind. To address all these challenges, the Doha Declaration recognizes cooperatives and the social and solidarity economy as key actors.
