OUR TOP 10 ACHIEVEMENTS FROM 2023 AND RECENT YEARS

11 January 2024

As we enter 2024, we take stock and celebrate what we together with our Members and partners have achieved in 2023 and recent years. Our Global Congress in December saw us begin a new governance term, and so celebrating this success will be particularly important as we begin that term – to reflect on what worked, the challenges we faced and to build on our priority areas. Take a look at our top ten achievements from the last four-year term below.     

1. We helped consumer organisations track prices for healthy and sustainable diets in African countries as part of our broader effort to shape food systems. Most recently, we released our innovative tool  - the Fair Food Monitor – which tracks food prices across the supply chain to expose the risk of unfair pricing.  

2. Members united for international calls for action on: Buy Now Pay Later, online product safety, cyber security, plastic pollution, energy and food systems. Did you know? Financial loss due to scams amounts to a staggering US$1.026 trillion. To address this, our latest call at Congress united over 20 Members to demand that legislation is put in place to protect consumers from scams.  

3. We awarded nine grants to consumer organisations to grow the consumer voice in digital finance and we broadened our global accelerator network to 65 organisations. We will shortly be launching the second edition of our Digital Finance Index – The Consumer Experience 2024 to help decision-makers focus on priority areas. In December we announced a new multistakeholder initiative, Building the Consumer Voice into Digital Finance, to explore global consumer protection models in the sector and to safeguard the most vulnerable.

4. We examined the experience of consumers online in personalised pricing, helping to end discriminatory business practice and we championed how consumer rights can thrive in the digital world.

5. We identified the policies and new business models that help consumers engage in the energy transition, featuring case studies from nine countries. Over 100 Members and partners joined in our unified call for a just transition for World Consumer Rights Day 2023. 

6. We scanned ways for all consumers to make sustainable lifestyles easy and normal with GlobeScan and continued our campaign to support sustainable living with Naturskyddsföreningen (SSNC). We are also proud to have worked closely with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) -  which recently saw us and Members take to the global stage to influence negotiations for a binding plastics treaty.

7. As India hosted the G20 last year, attention was brought to the issue of cross-border data flows. At Congress we announced a global multistakeholder initiative to drive understanding of how data flows can support consumer redress online.

8. We robustly assessed the state of sustainability information and released an action agenda to provide better information to consumers, calling for claims be made clearer and more trustworthy.

9. We welcomed 25 consumer organisations as new Members, joining our 200-Member strong global network. It is through this network that we have made the changes above happen.

10. Finally, over the past year the team at Consumers International expanded to work across 10 countries and five continents – allowing us to increase our global reach and influence. Our staff are always ready to discuss how leaders from government, business, civil society and consumer advocacy can shape our work and build a better marketplace. Please contact impact@consint.org to discuss with us.