Recognising Care as a Human Right and a Public Good in the Pact for the Future

Recognizing care as a human right and a public good requires the urgent need to rebuild the social organization of care to ensure it is universally accessible, equitable, and free from market-driven exploitation. Women and girls, who bear the brunt of unpaid and underpaid care work, must be at the heart of this change, with governments committing to provide universal public care services and regulate private involvement to align with human rights standards. This moment is a critical opportunity to enshrine care in the Pact for the Future, emphasizing its role in sustainable development, social justice, and gender equality, and ensuring that care work is recognized, redistributed, and fairly rewarded.

Recognising Care as a Human Right and a Public Good in THE PACT FOR THE FUTURE

Unions, feminists, and human rights organisations are united globally in calling for a bolder approach to care. Care, both paid and unpaid, is central to the functioning of our societies.  

Inequalities associated with care disproportionately affect women, who take on more than three times as much work within households (often limiting their opportunities to pursue decent work), and make up over ⅔ of the chronically underpaid care workforce globally.

Governments and International institutions must commit to rebuilding the social organisation of care to improve how people’s care needs are met. Unpaid care work, paid care work, public and private provision of care services, and community-based care arrangements are interrelated and should not be subordinated to unregulated market forces and for-profit interests which cause harm and abuse to both recipients of care and of providers of care. While private activity has a role in certain economic transactions, the commercialisation of public services, meaning the adoption of market-driven approaches and practices to deliver public services has placed services and resources that were publicly owned and managed in private hands. As stated before, this situation has increased inequalities and segregation, disproportionately harming the most overloaded with care work: women and girls.

To confront this, governments have a duty to directly provide universal public care services to fulfil women and girls’ right to decent work and to an adequate standard of living by continuously improving their living conditions, thus unlocking the unrealised promise of autonomy, independence, and full participation in society for them. 

Furthermore, whenever the private sector is involved, states must establish an adequate legal framework to ensure that any participation complies with human rights standards, including by regulating cross-border business practices and the extraterritorial obligations of multinational corporations. Such regulations should ensure that care work is appropriately valued and that care provision is not  subordinated to private interests or logics, but rather treated as a public good including through consequent regulation of private investments.

This year, care has been high on the international agenda. The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), and the International Labour Conference (ILC) of the International Labour Organisation both reached agreements on care, but they are not enough. 

For courageously advancing this care agenda, the Summit of the Future is an important opportunity to promote care as a human right and, therefore, a public good that benefits humanity's well-being and effectively places public care as part of the founding elements of sustainable development and social justice. We call on the international community for this recognition. 

The ongoing United Nations Intergovernmental negotiations on an International Framework Convention on Taxation are another welcome opportunity to recalibrate the governance of the international tax system and the sovereignty of taxing rights. Normative standards - including transparency and accountability, and the state's collection of the maximum available resources are key to enabling progressive care agendas at the national level.

The current understanding of care from multilateral bodies is limited, increasing the risk that care is further subjected to market dynamics and commodified by those who prioritize profit over people. This means that both the delivery of care and its access ⎼that influence the social organisation of care⎼ are unjust, inequitable, unequal, and unsustainable. Greater political will is urgently needed to address this situation and to prevent the public decision-making to be captured by corporations.

We must reclaim the public nature of care and make care – c are work and provision – a universally understood public good rather than a commodity to be exploited. States must provide, finance and regulate care and, especially, develop publicly-owned and run services that truly meet women’s needs and challenge the dominant financial and economic order. 

We must rectify the injustices of an extractive global care chain and recognise, redistribute, and reward care work by ensuring decent work and social protection for all care workers, including unpaid caregivers.

Therefore, we call on the United Nations system to include care as a human right in the Pact for the Future, as the heart of the rebuilding of the social organisation of care, and to include strong language to strengthen public services through public investments, thus enabling the fulfilment of the rights of women and girl’s. 

3 September 2024 - ActionAid – CESR – DAWNFeminist –GI-ESCR –Oxfam – Public Services International – TJN – FEMNET – WomanKind – Care International