Uruguay’s National Cooperative Institute (Inacooop) launched the International Year of Cooperatives during an event in Punta del Este on 20 February.
The launch featured UN officials, government dignitaries and co-operative leaders, including Uruguay’s vice president, Beatriz Argimón, and undersecretary of labour, Daniel Pérez.
In a video message Argimón described INACOP’s work in promoting decentralised public policies and encouraging different forms of co-operatives throughout the country. She referred to the co-op model as a tool to drive inclusion and sustainability.
Pérez pointed out that the country’s 4,000 co-operatives generate quality jobs for more than 30,000 Uruguayans, with the number of co-op jobs up by 20% since 2020. He argued that awareness raising was a big challenge adding that continuing to incorporate co-ops into the Uruguayan educational programmes was one way to address this.
Inacoop, which proposes and implements the national co-operative policies, organised the event as member of the Regional Network of Agencies for the Promotion, Supervision, Development, Regulation, and Financing of Co-operatives.
The co-presidents of the network, Paula Narváez Ojeda, Chilean ambassador to the UN, and Mario Lubetkin, deputy director general of FAO and foreign minister of the incoming government of Uruguay, also spoke at the event.
“We are living in a critical moment, marked by increasing inequalities,” said Narváez Ojeda. “We must urgently move towards fairer and more sustainable economic models, making an impact so that co-operatives appear in the draft texts of the main United Nations events such as Beijing+30, the World Social Forum and the Addis+10 Conference on financing development.”
Meanwhile, Lubetkin called for strengthening the presence of co-operatives in the regional and global agenda through public policies.
“Multilateralism and international co-operation are tools to affirm the values and launch messages and actions that the world needs,” he said.
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The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Ana Virginia Moreira, highlighted the importance of decent work and the social and solidarity economy (SSE) as strategic pillars for sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean. And she reiterated the ILO’s commitment to advancing co-operatives, in line with ILO Recommendation No. 193 on the promotion of cooperatives, and subsequent ILO resolutions on decent work and the SSE.
Next up, International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) president Ariel Guarco highlighted co-operatives’ long history. “Two hundred years ago we accepted that the world could not endure if we did not take care of our common home and if we did not put people at the centre of our economies,” he said.
“It’s no coincidence that, at a time of so many global social, economic, and environmental challenges, co-operatives are considered the key to building a sustainable future wherever they operate,” he added.
Participants also heard from Martín Fernández Aizcorbe, outgoing president of Inacoop and head of the Network of Public Organisations for Cooperative Promotion.
“In a changing world, we are in a position to provide certainty based on co-operative principles and values,” he said.
Carlos Mansilla, the international relations secretary at Cooperar, Argentina’s co-op apex, also pointed out that co-operaitives provide essential services in cities like Tandil in central Argentina.
“Light, food, housing, insurance, banks… our lives are permeated by co-operatives,” he said.
Co-ops provide similar services and meet essential needs in the province of Buenos Aires, explained Gildo Onorato, the head of Argentina’s Provincial Institute for Cooperative Action (IPAC). He added that the province is home to more than 7,000 co-operatives.
Cooperatives of the Americas (ACI-Americas), a regional organisation of the ICA, is planning a range of events exploring topics such as productivity, territorial development, finance, education and the care economy.
“There are no borders to the impact of co-operatives,” said ACI-Americas president José Alves. “The union of people, organisations and countries guided by values and principles has the power to transform the world.”
The IYC Americas events agenda, which includes national and regional events, will be updated regularly at aic2025americas.coop.
This article was last updated on 26 March
