The Fundación Espriu highlights the cooperative model at the UN’s Summit for Social Development
At the summit, the Member States signed the Doha Declaration, where they committed themselves to promoting inclusive, sustainable economic growth.
In the first week of November, Doha (Qatar) was turned into the epicentre of the global debate on social policies with the holding of the United Nations World Summit for Social Development. The meeting brought together 40 heads of State and Government, over 230 ministers and high-level civil servants and around 14,000 guests, amongst them representatives of the Fundación Espriu. The event was also the framework of the official closing ceremony of the International Year of Cooperatives 2025, a milestone that brought an end to a year devoted to highlighting the cooperative movement’s contribution to economic progress and to common welfare.
The cooperative model
Cooperative leaders from different business sectors took part in the closing ceremony, amongst them, the Director of the Fundación Espriu, Carlos Zarco, who intervened representing the healthcare sector. Zarco recalled that health is the essential foundation of social development: “Without a healthy population, there cannot be any productive economies, resilient communities or long-lasting progress".
In his speech he explained how the cooperative model provides effective solutions to improve access to healthcare services and the health results and how, also, it strengthens and complements the national healthcare systems by way of democratic structures, aimed at the common good. The participants coincided in the fact that the cooperative model, by putting people at the centre of the decision-making process, generates better results in terms of fairness, stability and sustainability.
Amongst the most prominent benefits they mentioned a fairer distribution of the surplus and a greater business resilience in the long-term, factors that contribute to a more balanced and inclusive social development than that of traditional mercantile models.
During the summit the Doha Declaration was adopted, in which the Member States of the United Nations undertook to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, as well as full employment in decent conditions. The document identifies cooperatives and the social economy as key agents and it calls to strengthening their development through public policies, suitable regulatory frameworks and greater access to funding. In this way, the declaration consolidates the line marked out by the recent reports issued by the UN’s Secretary General, recommending the review of laws and regulations to aid the creation and expansion of cooperative companies.
International commitments and the future outlook
Within the framework of the summit, the international cooperative movement launched the Contract for a new global economy, a call aimed at the public directors to officially acknowledge the cooperative model and integrate its contribution in the national strategies of the Sustainable Development Goals. Likewise, the International Cooperative Alliance presented its 2026-2030 strategy, covering three priorities: putting cooperative values into practice, strengthening cooperativism as a force for the common good and protecting the cooperative identity against external risks.
A special edition of the World Cooperative Monitor was also revealed, published on the occasion of the International Year of the Cooperatives. The report revealed that in 2023 the 300 main cooperatives in the world reached a joint invoicing of 2.39 billion a piece of information that confirms the extraordinary economic capacity of the sector and its growing prominence in the global economy. With the closing ceremony in Doha, the International Year of Cooperatives leaves a legacy of a strengthened agenda and a renewed international recognition of the cooperative model as a driving force for social development cohesion and sustainability.
The meeting ended with a global-scale announcement: the declaration at the Doha Social Summit of an International Year of Cooperatives every ten years, an acknowledgement that consolidates the role of this business model and strengthens the commitment of organisations such as the Fundación Espriu to social transformation and sustainable developmen .
