The February 2024 edition of the Cooperative Insider is now available in English, French and Spanish! This issue includes the latest news on cooperatives worldwide and updates from the ICA and our members. Cooperative Insider is a quarterly online magazine produced by the ICA and distributed to 20,000 addresses worldwide.
With 2025 declared the International Year of Cooperatives, the ICA Director General visited the UN Headquarters to discuss preparations for this important year-long celebration.
Several other events took place in January, including the B20 opening event at which Brazilian member OCB System represented the ICA. The month also saw the launch of the 2023 World Cooperative Monitor, which includes a special section on cooperative member benefits - these had also been highlighted during the International Cooperative Entrepreneurship Think Tank 14th Plenary Meeting in November 2023.
The newsletter features regional updates from ICA Africa, ICA Americas, ICA Asia-Pacific and the European region. We look back at several events that took place in late 2023, including the ICA-Africa regional conference, the 4th International Forum on Cooperative Law, the 23rd Conference of Cooperatives of the Americas, the 16th ICA-AP Regional Assembly European Social Economy Conference and the 9th Conference of the Platform Cooperatives Consortium.
The issue also shows how ICA has continued to engage with its international partners, discussing cooperatives in the context of Legal Structures of Agricultural Enterprises with UNIDROIT, as part of the latter’s efforts to develop an international guide on Collaborative Legal Structures for Agricultural Enterprises (LSAE), and working with the International Trade Centre and the African Export–Import Bank to launch a consultative dialogue with African fashion designers to explore the possibilities of creating a Pan-African fashion collective organised in a cooperative.
The ICA and the Ius Cooperativum Association, an independent network of cooperative lawyers, have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to advance the knowledge and practice of cooperative law - this issue explores what the agreement means. We also pay tribute to one of the pioneers in the field of cooperative law, Professor Hans-H. Münkner, who died in November 2023.
For all this and more, check out the latest edition of the Cooperative Insider:
English: https://crm.ica.coop/civicrm/mailing/view?id=3560
