The report is submitted in response to General assembly resolution 60/132 in which the Secretary-General was requested to submit a report to the General Assembly at its sixty-second session.

Chapter 1 provides and introduction and review of the role of co-operatives in promoting employment generation. Chapter 11 discusses how co-operatives, as business enterprises, contribute to employment creation in different sectors and for certain social groups.

Chapter 111 identifies some emerging opportunities and some challenges that co-operatives face in relation to employment creation; and discusses the role of the different stakeholders towards that end. The report also presents the results of a survey of Member States regarding their views on the role of co-operatives in employment creation and offers recommendations for consideration by the Assembly.

Forty eight Member States of the UN responded to the survey. Countries that did provide their views on the role of co-operatives in employment creation included Canada, Germany, Greece, Spain and the United States of America.

The report is available in the official UN languages - Arabic, Chinese, English, french, Russian and Spanish at http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/social/publications/reports/index.html