Consumers International
United Nations body for consumer protection
Consumers International is the membership organization for consumer groups around the world. Founded on 1 April 1960, it has over 250 member organizations in 120 countries. Its head office is situated in London, England, and has numerous regional offices in Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa.
Consumers International is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee.
History
The organization was first established in the year 1960 as the International organization of Consumers Unions (IOCU) by National consumer organizations who wanted to create cross-border campaigns and share knowledge.
IOCU was founded by Elizabeth Schadee, who would later chair the board of the Netherlands' Consumentenbond, and Caspar Brook, who was the first director of the United Kingdom's Consumers' Association. The two proposed an international conference to plan for consumer product testing organizations worldwide to work more closely together. The United States organization Consumers Union provided US$10,000 at the request of Colston Warne to help fund the event.
In January 1960, these three organizations sponsored the First International Conference on Consumer Testing in The Hague. Thirty-four people representing seventeen consumer organizations in fourteen countries attended to discuss product testing and founding the International organization of Consumers Unions as an international organization.
“Consumers International” enters the record as united Nations body for consumer protection. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Consumers, International and United can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Consumers International” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.