World Consumer Rights Day
Next: March 15, 2027
Consumers include us all.
The story
Where it comes from
On 15 March 1962 US President John F Kennedy sent a special message to Congress on consumer rights, the first world leader to address the subject formally. 'Consumers include us all,' he said, yet they were the one important group 'whose views are often not heard'. Twenty years later the Malaysian campaigner Anwar Fazal, president of the International Organisation of Consumers Unions, now Consumers International, proposed an international day on that date. The first World Consumer Rights Day was held on 15 March 1983.
How it's celebrated
Consumer organisations around the world run campaigns, publish tests and surveys, and meet regulators and businesses to press for fairer, safer markets. For the rest of us it is a good day to read the small print, return the faulty kettle, and thank the people who test things so that we don't have to.
Did you know
- Anwar Fazal was one of the founders of the Consumers Association of Penang in 1969.
- Consumers International was founded in The Hague in March 1960 by five consumer groups from the US, Western Europe and Australia.
- After ten years of campaigning by the consumer movement, the UN adopted its Guidelines for Consumer Protection in 1985.
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