Dear cooperative members,
This Saturday, 4 July, we will celebrate another International Day of Cooperatives, focusing on peace.
Unfortunately, we live in a time when violence has taken hold in many territories.
Today, more than 50 high-intensity armed conflicts and more than 120 armed conflicts in general are affecting millions of people in different parts of our planet.
Global military spending reached $2.89 trillion, representing a 2.9% increase and marking the eleventh consecutive year of growth.
Meanwhile, more than 830 million people live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than $2.15 a day.
This occurs in a context where too much uncertainty is generated by the digitisation, automation, and robotisation of the ways we produce, consume, and live, given that the vast majority of us are the object, not the subjects, of these transformations.
For 200 years, cooperatives have been a vehicle for controlling our livelihoods as workers, producers, consumers, users, savers, etc... Today, this model is more relevant than ever.
Cooperatives are probably the only vehicle capable of guaranteeing that this entire great transformation is carried out with community control and can, therefore, be oriented toward the common good.
Cooperatives are also schools of peace, as they promote dialogue, transparency, and fraternal exchange among people from the most diverse cultural, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds.
For all these reasons, we believe that the social, cultural, and environmental harmony produced by the cooperative economy is an indispensable requirement for achieving positive peace.
This, as we know, is more than simply decreeing an end to violence, which we already advocate and demand from those responsible for doing so.
On this International Day of Cooperatives, let us, together with our members and our communities, recognise the daily contribution we make, from this perspective, to a world at peace.
Humanity urgently needs to move towards a future of peace as a result of solidarity, inclusion, and social justice.
Let us continue building together the future we want and deserve, for ourselves and for the generations that come after us.
Happy International Day of Cooperatives!
