REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Asia Pacific ministers of cooperatives have formulated Declaration 14 in a regional consultative meeting here recently.
Person in charge of substance for ASEAN and East Asia Roby Tulus said here on Sunday the meeting done behind doors here on October 1-2 had recommended internal reform so that the world cooperative movement could get global recogniation.
"The 14 recommendations may be put into two categories namely internal and external. The internal category recommend that cooperatives must put themselves in order by conducting internal reform while the second one recommend that all visions, missions, new approaches, strategies and programs of cooperative movement must be directed towards global recognition," he said.
He said recognition is expected to come not only from the government but also international institutions, non-governmental institutions, the media and the general public.
The first of the 14 recommendations produced at the meeting which is the initiative of the regional cooperative movement (International Cooperative Alliance) emphasizes the importance of empowerment, education and training of cooperatives members and leaders.
The second emphasizes important access to food, social and financial service while the third on how cooperatives in the current digital era could maximize the use of information and communication technology without having to lose control on members.
The fourth proposes new approach to attract women and younger generation to the cooperative movement while the fourth calls for new approach or one stop system to reduce supply and value chain in the framework of benefiting members.
The sixth recommendation which is regarding demographic is about how cooperatives could take benefit from the demographic bonus while the seventh is aboout how to strengthen cooperatives not only regionally and globally and extend collaborative efforts between regional networks such as ACO, NEDAC, ASSEDAG, COPAC and bilateral as well as multilateral agencies.
The eight recommendation emphasizes needs to build and develop stronger relations with new countries in the region such as Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia while the ninth on needs to find a way to make political will of the government could be supported in its implementation in the field.
The tenth recommendation is about how to strengthen efforts to collaborate and build economic scale and during critical period while the eleventh is on how to make segmentation and assessment with regard to making cooperatives rating agency in the future.
The twelfth recommendation is on green economy to assure sustainability of cooperatives based on environmental awareness while the thirteenth is regarding environment support to make it possible for migrant families enter into formal economy (cooperatives).
The fourteeth recommendation calls for conducting census and motivating members to provide data about their cooperatives.
All the recommendations would be discussed further in the conference of cooperative ministers of Asia Pacific next year, Robby said.
Nurdin Halid, the general chairman of Dekopin and alss vice president of ICA Asia Pacific said the conference of cooperatives ministers in Indonesia next year would be very strategic as last week the United Nations had determined 17 Goals and 169 Targets in the Sustainable Development Goals Program.
"There are links between SDGs and 2020 Vision Blueprint of ICA as well as Dekopin (Indonesian Cooperatives Council) vision 2045 of making cooperatives as state pillars especially with regard to dealing issues such as poverty, hunger, gender inequality, health, education and environmental destruction," he said.
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