International Cooperative Alliance information

International Cooperative Alliance

Company type	Cooperative federation
Industry	activities of other membership organisations n.e.c. cooperative movement
Founded	1895 (1895)
Headquarters	Brussels , Belgium
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Ariel Guarco, President Jeroen Douglas, Director General
Members	more than 300 organisations
Website	www.ica.coop

The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) is a non-governmental cooperative organization founded in 1895 to unite, represent and serve cooperatives worldwide. The ICA is the custodian of the internationally recognised definition, values and principles of a cooperative in the ICA Statement on the Cooperative Identity. The ICA represents 315 co-operative federation and organisations in 107 countries.^[1]

The ICA provides a global voice and forum for knowledge, expertise and coordinated action for and about cooperatives. The members of the ICA are international and national cooperative organisations from all sectors of the economy, including agriculture, banking, consumer, fisheries, health, housing, insurance, industry and services. The ICA has members from more than 100 countries, and it is estimated to represent one billion individuals worldwide. Cooperatives are values-based businesses owned by their members. Whether they are customers, employees or residents, the members get an equal say in the business and a share of the profits.

At the United Nations, the ICA participates in high-level discussions of relevance to cooperatives through its consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which it has had since 1946, the first non-governmental organisation to do so. The ICA also has individual partnership agreements with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), and participates in the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy (UNTFSSE). Since 1971, the ICA has been a founding member of the Committee for the Promotion and Advancement of Cooperatives (COPAC), a UN multi-stakeholder partnership of global public and private institutions that promotes and advocates for people-centred, self-sustaining cooperative enterprises, guided by the principles of economic, social and environmental sustainable development.

The ICA has been participating in the G20 Engagement Groups since 2014, having representatives in the taskforces and contributing actively to the discussions and preparation of documents. In 2020, the ICA created the Cooperative G20 Working Group to bring the cooperative movement's voices to the G20 Engagement Groups through their contribution in drafting policy papers, background materials, and advocacy documents to show their involvement and contribution in resolving issues addressed by the G20 Summit.

In 2006 the ICA published the first major index of the world's largest cooperative and mutual enterprises, the ICA Global 300,^[2] which demonstrated the scale of the cooperative movement globally. Since 2011, together with European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises (EURICSE), the ICA Global 300 has evolved into the World Cooperative Monitor, a project designed to collect robust economic, organizational, and social data about cooperatives worldwide. The publication reports on the world's largest cooperatives and mutuals, or groups of coop­eratives and mutuals, including rankings of the Top 300 and sectoral analysis. Since 2018, each edition has also a thematic focus, in 2022 it was dedicated to the digitalization and the cooperative identity.

The ICA created in 2018 the International Cooperative Entrepreneurship Think Tank (ICETT) to boost cooperatives' entrepreneurial performance. Through innovative ideas, research, education, and cooperation, its members address the global challenges that cooperative enterprises are facing today.

On the first Saturday of July each year, the ICA coordinates celebrations of International Day of Cooperatives.

In December 2009, the United Nations declared 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives.

The ICA launched its 2020-2030 Strategic Plan, named “A People-Centred Path to a Second Cooperative Decade”, based on the earlier Blueprint for a Cooperative Decade, and providing strategic guidance to the ICA and its bodies for the 2020-2030 decade. This Strategic Plan is based on 22 months of preparatory work, including two surveys with the whole ICA membership, two consultations with the ICA bodies (Regions, Sectoral Organizations, Thematic Committees and Youth Network) and several days of meetings and written consultations within the ICA Board.