Consumers at UNCTAD16: Advocating and Preparing for Resilient, Safe and Fair Markets
As global leaders gathered for the 16th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development to shape the organisation’s next four-year mandate, one message rang clear: the systems that govern trade, technology, and markets must evolve to better serve people.
Economies everywhere are under pressure from geopolitical and global trade tensions, years of high inflation and accelerating digital integration. Against this backdrop, 195 member states gathered for the 16th Conference on Trade and Development (“UNCTAD16”) to try to strike a balance in how trade, investment, and the digital economy can drive economic growth and competitiveness, while ensuring inclusion, sustainability and resilience for consumers.
For over 60 years, Consumers International has worked to ensure consumer realities shape global frameworks, from pioneering product safety campaigns in the 1970s to today’s challenges of scams, digital finance, food systems, clean energy and artificial intelligence. By virtue of our General Consultative Status at the United Nations, Consumers International was able to bring a global delegation of consumer advocates to UNCTAD16, to stress the importance of consumer protection to fair, inclusive and sustainable growth.
Our goals were simple: to advocate on behalf of our worldwide Membership for stronger and improved product safety frameworks, both nationally and internationally; to encourage and support member states’ delegates, global businesses and intergovernmental authorities to think forward to and prepare for the needs of consumers in 2030; and to deepen and strengthen relationships with the UNCTAD secretariat.
Advocating for a consumer product safety resolution – and calling for updated measures to reflect our digital age
The concept of “product safety” is evolving. Unsafe consumer products continue to pose serious risks to public health and sustainable development. UNCTAD data shows that 44% of member States lack sufficient legal frameworks to ensure product safety, while a recent OECD review found that 87% of banned or recalled products remain available for purchase online. There is an urgent need for stronger national frameworks and international cooperation – especially as digital risks introduce new and elevated product and design vulnerabilities that cut across borders and sectors.
Speaking on the panel on "Safe Products for All Consumers” alongside global leaders – including ministers, secretaries of state, and heads of consumer and trade authorities from the European Union, South Africa, Portugal, and Colombia – Consumers International stressed that strong, modern safety systems are essential not only to prevent harm, but to build resilience. Safe, trusted environments enable consumers to engage confidently with the next generation of technology and economic opportunities. This about ensuring innovation develops on a foundation of trust, accountability, and safety-by-design.
Drawing on our long record of leadership in this area – from developing the Global Guidelines for Online Product Safety (endorsed by the OECD in 2021) to contributing to the draft UN Principles for Consumer Product Safety earlier this year – we called for greater accountability for online marketplaces, shared safety intelligence across borders, and support for developing countries to strengthen enforcement.
Interventions from our Members also called for a broader definition of “product”, one that reflects today’s realities encompassing data privacy, mental well-being, gendered risks, and environmental impact. These interconnected factors must be addressed as part of a single, holistic approach to consumer protection. For that to happen, consumer organisations must be resourced, empowered, and connected, ensuring local insight drives global cooperation and safer markets for all.
Supporting innovation and technologies in the consumer interest – backed by guarantees of safety, explainability and accountability
Artificial intelligence (AI) featured prominently throughout the week, with governments, businesses, and experts recognising it as a future piece of critical global infrastructure — shaping public services, markets, and everyday choices. From a consumer perspective, AI holds both promise and risk: it can expand access and efficiency, but if left unchecked, it can also deepen inequality and erode trust.
Our delegation reinforced that core consumer rights – safety, fairness, transparency and redress – must apply equally to AI systems. While 52% of consumer advocates expect AI to deliver positive change, only 5% say it is “very clear” to consumers when they are interacting with the technology. Building trust depends on privacy and accessibility by design, accountability mechanisms that lets consumers understand and challenge automated decisions, and global coherence in AI governance.
Ultimately, AI must be built around human values.
Imagining the consumer of 2030 and supporting stakeholders to prepare for their needs
In a unique gathering of our global Change Network, we convened high-level representatives from government, business and consumer organisations to ask: Are today’s frameworks fit for the digital consumer of 2030? The roundtable focused on what the consumer of 2030 will need to thrive and how resilience, inclusion, and sustainability can shape fair and trusted digital markets.
Participants identified the forces transforming consumer experiences, from escalating online scams and growing financial vulnerability to the rapid spread of AI and data-driven business models. The conclusion was clear: consumer protection and innovation must advance together.
Three priorities emerged:
- Urgent and stronger national responses and coordinated international action to eliminate online scams, address emerging AI risks and strengthen redress systems.
- Global efforts to close digital and skills divides and improve consumer access to markets and technology.
- Building trust in technology through greater transparency, accountability and fairness in digital platforms.
A resilient, inclusive digital economy can only be achieved through partnership – placing consumer advocates at the heart of global cooperation.
A call for global coherence – delivered to UN Member States and the UNCTAD Secretary General
In our formal intervention to the UNCTAD16 General Debate, as well as in a civil society dialogue with UNCTAD Secretary General Rebecca Grynspan, we delivered an open letter on behalf of Consumers International Members, urging stronger international coordination on consumer protection. We called for:
- Governments to take the lead in building competitive, safe and protected digital markets, coordinating responses to known and emerging risks and setting clear, enforceable rules, with redress that is fast, fair and accessible.
- Consumer protection authorities, businesses and civil society to act together to build consumer and systemic resilience to digital ecosystems.
- Consumer advocates to support governments and businesses in developing clear, harmonised standards so consumers can trust that the products and services they use are trusted, empowering and explainable.
Looking ahead
The challenges ahead are complex, but the opportunity is greater still: to build markets where consumers can participate confidently in the technologies of tomorrow.
Moving forward, we will continue to champion policies and build partnerships that turn trust into resilience, inclusion into empowerment, and innovation into fairness.
Because when consumers thrive, markets do too.
