By Rebecca Harvey, Co-op News
Cooperation builds trust, which builds peace – and the ICA Global Conference in Panama will be a place to explore this further in the company of cooperative practitioners, activists and experts.
The theme – Building Bridges: Cooperative Contributions for a Peaceful World – pulls the focus of the event to a future that can become a reality as the global movement works together to build a better world.
Cooperatives as schools for peace
Being a member of a cooperative – whether as a worker, consumer, resident or something else – repeatedly tests whether people will keep their word when they don't strictly have to. Every cooperative act, from showing up to a meeting to voting fairly in a governance structure, is a small experiment in reliability. When the other party follows through, you update your expectations of them upward. Do that enough times, across enough people, and you build what sociologists term "generalised trust": not just "I trust this specific person" but "I trust that people like me, in structures like this, will act fairly."
Cooperatives work particularly well at this because they act as schools for peace. Members are bound together over years, not a single transaction, and there is a shared stake in outcomes. Member education, cooperation among cooperatives, one-member-one-vote and open accounting reduce the information asymmetries that can breed suspicion, while in divided societies, cooperatives that pull members from different ethnic, religious, or political groups build cooperation across the lines that conflict usually hardens.
Peace between groups is trust at scale: the trust and belief that "the other side" won't defect, won't attack, and will honour agreements. Cooperative social and economic ties raise the tangible and intangible cost of conflict, to the extent that cooperation isn't just a byproduct of peace, cooperatives are used as infrastructure for building it.
The Global Conference programme includes several sessions dedicated to the theme, including a panel debate on the Cooperative Path to Peaceful Multilateralism (Wednesday 16, 11:30-12:30), which will focus on governance, economic integration, and the creation of enabling environments as pathways to peace, featuring Mario Lubetkin (Uruguay Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of G77), Sabelo Mbokazi (Head of Labour, Employment & Migration, African Union Commission), Matteo Fontana (Italy Ambassador to the EU, EU Delegation Panama), Shobha Shetty (India): Senior Adviser, Agriculture at the World Bank Group and Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) Head, Chitose Arai (Japan) Vice President of the Japanese Consumers' Cooperative Union (JCCU) and Hagen Henrÿ (Germany): Chair of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) Cooperative Law Committee.
Another panel debate will explore Cooperatives and Leadership in Peacebuilding (17 September, 09:45-11h), looking at how locally rooted cooperative initiatives contribute to peacebuilding at the global level, with María Ortiz Pérez (Executive Director for Leadership Initiatives, Aspen Institute, Mexica), Jorge Arosemena (Panamá) Executive Director and Founder, City of Knowledge, Donna Dizen (Vice-President, CLIMBS (Philippines)), Valtencir Mendes (Brasil) - Chief of Education, UNESCO Office for Latin America and Caribe (virtual), Aline Nyirabaruta (CODERVAM, Rwanda), Francois Dionne (International Programme Director, SOCODEVI (Canada)) and Simone Gamberini (President, LEGACOOP (Italy)).
Also joining the event are Michelle Bachelet, former President of Chile and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who will give an online keynote address on human rights, leadership, and the intersection of social values and policy; Bjørg Sandkjær, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs since March 2025, who brings over 26 years in international development policy, having previously served as Norway's Deputy Minister for International Development; and David Fernández Puyana, Ambassador and Permanent Observer of the UN-mandated University for Peace (UPEACE) to the UN and UNESCO in Geneva, Vienna, and Paris since 2008. Puyana was a key architect of the UN's 2016 Declaration on the Right to Peace and remains active in peace diplomacy today, including recent commentary on the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process.
The theme of peace will thread throughout other elements of the programme too - including interactive workshops around gender and youth, communications, advocacy, legislation and intercooperation (Wednesday 16 September 14:45 - 17:15h), cultural activities and a collective origami performance, creating a cooperative flock of peace doves.
Explore the full programme here: https://icapanama2026.coop/programme/
Access the speakers list here: https://icapanama2026.coop/speakers/
