The ILO views cooperatives as important for improving the living and working conditions of women and men globally, and for making essential infrastructure and services available even in areas neglected by the state and by investor-driven enterprises. Cooperatives have a proven record of creating and sustaining employment. Today, they provide over 100 million jobs, advance the ILO’s Global Employment Agenda and contribute to promoting decent work.

Drawing on the only international governmental instrument on cooperatives, the ILO Promotion of Cooperatives Recommendation, 2002 (R.193), the ITCILO offers a training course on cooperative policy and cooperative law.This course includes topics such as participatory policy and law-making, taxation of cooperatives, labour law in cooperatives, accounting standards, competition law, and implementation of the law.

The ILO works in close partnership with the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), the representative world body of cooperatives. This allows it to reach out to the real world of income generation of hundreds of millions of co-operators around the world.

Additionally, the ILO supports the development of the social and solidarity economy through knowledge-sharing forums and capacity-building events.

More information on cooperatives and the ILO:
www.ilo.org/coop

More information on training related to cooperatives and to the social and solidarity economy:
www.itcilo.org/emld