About WCRD

History and purpose

15 March is World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD), an annual occasion for celebration and solidarity within the international consumer movement. It marks the date in 1962 President John F Kennedy first outlined the definition of Consumer Rights.

WCRD is an opportunity to promote the basic rights of all consumers, for demanding that those rights are respected and protected, and for protesting the market abuses and social injustices which undermine them.

WCRD was first observed on 15 March 1983, and has since become an important occasion for mobilising citizen action.

How is WCRD observed?

Consumer organisations around the world, big and small, use materials produced by CI to generate local initiatives and media coverage for their work over the coming year.

Initiatives can take the shape of special campaigns, press conferences, public exhibitions, workshops, street events or new publications, to name only a few possibilities.

Consumer groups may adapt CI's materials to have the greatest local impact. Whatever the objectives, they share the same underlying aim of bringing about important and needed benefits for consumers.