Improving Institutional Capacity:

Strengthening Farmer Organizations in the OIC Member Countries

based on terms that ensure continued control by the members and maintains the

cooperative’s autonomy.

Education, training and information.

The cooperative should provide education and

training to members, elected representatives, managers, and employees, so that they

can contribute effectively to its development. They should also promote the benefits of

cooperation to the general public in order to interest others in joining the

organization.

Cooperation among cooperatives.

Cooperatives serve their members most

effectively and strengthen the cooperative movement by working together through

local, national, regional and international structures.

Concern for community.

While focussing on members’ needs, cooperatives should

also work for the sustainable development of communities through policies and

programs accepted by the members.

4.3.2.

At a national level: Adopting a guiding framework for the promotion

of cooperatives

The first task for a national government seeking to strengthen farmer organizations is to

understand core principles of a strong enabling environment – legal principles that will allow

strong, autonomous FOs to flourish and work for the benefit of their members, rather than for

political or other purposes. The agencies described in Section 4.2 have devoted significant

effort to developing recommendations on national level principles, and this section explores

two such frameworks: ILO Recommendation 193, and the CLARITY framework developed by

USAID.

ILO Recommendation 193

ILO Recommendation 193 is an international convention and standard on the promotion of

cooperatives. The Recommendation was adopted by the ILO in 2002 in recognition of the

importance of cooperatives in job creation, resource mobilization, and investment generation.

The overriding purpose of the Recommendation is to create a workable and actionable

guideline to inform and guide interventions aimed at promoting and strengthening

cooperatives, which it defines as ‘

an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to

meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned

and democratically controlled enterprise

’

Recommendation 193 outlines that the promotion and strengthening of the identity of

cooperatives should be encouraged on the basis of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy,

equity and solidarity. Furthermore, the suggestion that the promotion of cooperatives should

be aligned to the cooperative principles reinforces the commitment of the ILO and the

international cooperative movement to the values of self-help, democracy and equality,

voluntary and open membership and democratic member control. These principles also place

a premium on the provision of member education, training and information. These principles

have also informed the role that the Recommendation envisages for the government in the

promotion of cooperatives. In particular, the government should provide a supportive policy

International Labor Organisation, Recommendation 193 on the Promotion of Cooperatives. Geneva, June 2002