Highlights from UNCTAD – 9th United Nations Conference on Competition and Consumer Protection

From 7 July to 11 July 2025, we joined the 9th United Nations Conference on Competition and Consumer Protection in Geneva, bringing a delegation of our Members to the discussions. We shared an important message amidst times of global change and rising costs for consumers: consumer policy and the advocates behind it are essential for market efficiency, growth, and trust.

Across the week together with our Members, we celebrated the 40th Anniversary of the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection: we marked this milestone by reflecting on progress made, our input to help shape the Guidelines, and by calling for stronger protections fit for today’s markets.

We helped to pass the adoption of a new draft resolution on product safety, which we encouraged through our role on UNCTAD’s Working Group on Product Safety, setting a global framework for safer products and stronger consumer protection.

We held an exclusive side event with 40+ participants to build strong bridges between governments, consumer groups and international organisations, discussing the importance of effective collaboration and how consumer advocates provide critical consumer-to-government feedback loops powered by Consumers International’s delegation participated and intervened in key sessions on food supply chains, cross border enforcement and circular economy, sharing impact from our collective work and recommendations to drive strong. inclusive consumer protection.

We facilitated high-level dialogue with leaders at the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and UNCTAD on the value of consumer groups in shaping global food health systems that speak to consumer needs, trade and development policy, and pressing consumer concerns such as tariffs.

Safeguarding and automating consumers into to age of AI. We homed in on advancing protections to catch up with the risk posed by new technology, such as AI, with Members joining the Al for Good Summit and Consumers International speaking on a high-level panel at the Conference.