During the ICA Global Cooperative Conference in Panama, Co-op News caught up with two UN representatives who spoke at the event – and see the value of co-operation within peacebuilding.
Bjørg Sandkjær, assistant secretary-general in UN Desa, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, at the UN Secretariat in New York, believes the conference theme – Building Bridges: Cooperative Contributions for a Peaceful World – “is a great topic for a conference with and about co-operatives.”
“We’ve heard so many great examples of how co-operatives build different types of bridges in societies,” she said. “One important aspect of what we’ve heard is how co-operatives are so important in building the foundations of society, in building more sustainable and fair economies where people can participate and get a fair wage, where people can participate in democratic decisions about issues that affect their lives. Co-operatives build trust, which is so important for stable and good societies.”
At UN level, it helps that several member states have brought the issue of co-operatives into the global discussion, she added, highlighting two important conferences that took place during the 2025 International Year of Cooperatives. The Financing for Development conference in Sevilla, Spain, resulted in the Sevilla Commitment, which recognises the important role of co-operatives, as did the Doha Declaration from the Second World Summit for Social Development.
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“So we have that strong impetus from member states for us at the Secretariat to really bring [co-operatives] forward,” she said, “but that is not just talk at the global level; it’s important decisions that then help us support the work to translate all of that into change in communities and people’s lives.”
“In a world right now where we are going through geopolitical tensions, conflict, climate crisis, you see cooperatives as an important place where people can come together, change their communities, build trust, and help support democracy.”
David Fernández Puyana, ambassador and permanent observer of the UN University for Peace to the UN office in Geneva, Vienna, and the headquarters in Unesco, also acknowledged the role of co-operative peace, built through the notion of trust he sees inherent in co-operatives. “Without trust, a co-operative does not exist,” he said. “The cycle of trust among the people deciding to work together in a co-operative is an excellent example of peacebuilding and peacemaking.”
He too believes there is a strong link between the co-operative movement and the framework of the UN system, which is based on three main pillars: human rights; peace and security; and development.
“We cannot understand, for instance, development without the respect of human rights,” he says. “Both pillars have an impact on peace and security. In that sense, this conference on co-operatives is an excellent platform to discuss new ways, new avenues, how to reinforce and to let the people know about the useful platform of co-operatives in order to work and then to have an impact on the people on the ground, regardless of race, origin, sexual orientation etc.”
Puyana helped draft the 2016 UN Declaration on the Right to Peace, and he paid tribute to the government of Costa Rica for promoting and then supporting the declaration.
“It was the first legal instrument adopted on peace by the General Assembly in the 21st century,” he said. “The idea is to work together with the different partners to have one day a treaty on the right to peace. The right to peace, at the end of the day, is the reinforcement of the right to live in a world of peace, security, human rights, and development.”
He highlighted that peace itself is not defined, but instead is “defined by the elements” and noted that co-operative decision-making processes (one member, one vote) are another good example of how to bring peace.
For Sandkjær, the conference was “a great place to see and hear examples from co-operatives all over the world that are bringing communities together, that are creating that democracy and trust that we are looking for in our unstable world at the moment.”
She said: “It’s been incredibly inspiring to hear all the good work that’s going on – not just the different examples, but the scale of the work that some of the co-operatives are involved in, making real difference and real change.
“I would like to encourage everyone to go out and really talk more about the good work that cooperatives are doing and the contributions that they are providing to a more just and stable world.”
