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Explore our work with partners, globally and locally, to tackle social and economic injustice using a human rights lens.

The Implications of Recognising Care as a Social Right during the XVI Regional Conference on Women of Latin America and the Caribbean 

The Implications of Recognising Care as a Social Right during the XVI Regional Conference on Women of Latin America and the Caribbean 

The XVI version of the Regional Conference on Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, convened by ECLAC in coordination with UN Women and the Government of Mexico, took place in Mexico City from 12 to 15 August 2025.  

As part of the official commitments of the Conference and those of the Care Pavilion organised by the Global Alliance for Care, we played an active role in last week's debates, co-organising five events that highlighted the centrality of care as a human right and a public good. 

Official Conference Events 

As part of the official program of the Conference, we co-sponsored two high-level events: 

  • Public Care Services: Regional progress and challenges in the lead-up to the Second World Summit for Social Development (11 August). This panel gathered representatives from the governments of Colombia and Brazil, trade unions, international organisations, and civil society to share and discuss the lessons learned from creating national care systems, the persistent gaps in guaranteeing rights through public services, and the need for regional cooperation. 

Our Program Officer on Public Services and Care, Valentina Contreras Orrego, moderated the session. She noted, "Public services, when they meet the basic characteristics of universality and quality, such as those we have been promoting for years through the Global Manifesto for Public Services, guarantee the rights of all people; redistribute caregiving responsibilities; and strengthen social cohesion."

  • Financing Care to Sustain Life: A Regional Feminist Agenda (11 August). This session explored the structural links between care, social security, and fiscal policy in Latin America and the Caribbean. Speakers from feminist networks, trade unions, and government institutions reflected on the challenges imposed by austerity and fiscal regressiveness and on the need for progressive financing to ensure the sustainability of public care systems. 

 Events at the Care Pavilion 

Within the vibrant and collaborative space of the Care Pavilion, designed to visibilise and strengthen the global care agenda, we co-organised three sessions that brought the lens of care into dialogue with environmental and climate justice: 

  • Towards Climate Justice Centred on Care and Support in Latin America and the Caribbean (13 August). This event shed light on the interconnections between the triple planetary crisis (climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss) and the care economy, highlighting how paid and unpaid care work represent a hidden pillar of economies and societies in the region. Despite this fact, the event sought to unravel how this work remains unequally distributed along gender, race, ethnicity, and class, and is being exacerbated by the intensification of the demand and the reduction of supplies produced by climate change. Watch the full recording here. 

 

  • Towards Just Transitions Centred on Care: Feminist Proposals in Response to the Climate Crisis (14 August). This session was intended to publicly release the publication we co-produced along with UNRISD, "Ensuring Justice in Transition. A Gender-Transformative Approach." It also brought together feminist organisations, governments, and international agencies to comment on it and discuss how care can serve as an axis for just and gender-transformative transitions. Access the full recording here. 

Valentina Contreras highlighted that "Our call is for the recognition of the human right to care as a fundamental part of the right to an adequate standard of living." Integrating environmental care as a fourth dimension is also key to considering all people who currently perform this essential work for the sustainability of our lives." 

  • On the Road to COP: Gender Transformative Approaches Towards a Care Society (15 August). Finally, this workshop explored concrete arguments and tactics that feminist and care-centred movements can collectively use to enrich the international climate negotiations and transition agendas during the upcoming Conference of the Parties in Brazil this November. 

 A Week of Collective Action 

By participating in both the official intergovernmental debates and the innovative spaces of the Care Pavilion, we amplified our networking and advocacy for care to be recognised as a social right and a public good, especially through the implementation of universal and quality public services and universal and fair fiscal policies throughout the region. We highlighted these issues during the General Assembly led by the Global Alliance for Care, and the First Caregiving Masculinities Advocacy Laboratory for Latin America, led by Equimundo. 

These interventions reaffirmed our mission of transforming power relations to enable every person and community to enjoy their economic, social, and cultural rights and all other human rights now and in the future, by promoting transformative policies that redistribute care responsibilities among people and states. They also strengthened alliances with governments, civil society, trade unions, and international organisations working to ensure that the transition towards more equal and sustainable societies is anchored in care, dignity, and rights. 

 The Outcome Document 

As an outcome of the whole Conference, the Member States of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), participating in the XVI Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, approved the Commitment of Tlatelolco, which establishes a decade of action 2025-2035 in Latin America and the Caribbean to accelerate the achievement of substantive gender equality and the care society through transformations in the political, economic, social, cultural and environmental spheres. 

The document successfully recognises that the concept of care society advanced by Latin America and the Caribbean is a new paradigm for sustainable development, equality, and peace, while prioritising the sustainability of life and the planet. It also followed the Consultative Opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, by innovatively recognising the human right to care, including the right of people to care, to be cared for, and to exercise self-care. 

Despite the significant advances shaped and modelled by this Conference, there remain several challenges for the future, especially regarding: 

  • The inclusion of environmental care as a fourth dimension of the human right to care.
  • The connection of regional agreements with UN standards of public services to the right to care.
  • The protection of care public services against the market economy, commercialisation, and financialisation; and  
  • The ways in which community provision can also be considered as a public service, as recognised by the Global Manifesto for Public Services. 

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Climate and Environmental Justice

We have advanced rights-based and gender-transformative transition frameworks through research that centres the lived experiences of women and marginalised communities on the frontlines of extractive energy policies, promoting climate and energy frameworks attentive to the social and care-related impacts of transition pathways. We have developed a clear vision for a gender-just transition, firmly rooted in gender and human rights norms, establishing both the legal basis and the direction for the transformative changes our planet and societies urgently need. In particular, the ‘Guiding Principles for Gender Equality and Human Rights in the Energy Transition’, a collective effort built through online consultations, an in-person workshop and multiple rounds of revision with activists, practitioners and experts from around the world, outline a transformative vision for reshaping global energy systems through a human rights and gender equality lens.

Our work recognises that the climate emergency is both an existential threat and an opportunity to reimagine societies built on social, gender, economic and environmental justice. We ground our advocacy in feminist and intersectional principles, prioritising the agency and perspectives of communities in the Global South who have contributed the least to the climate emergency yet face its most devastating consequences. Central to our approach is the understanding that energy is not merely a commodity but a fundamental human right; essential for dignity, health, education, work and the realisation of countless other rights. We challenge approaches to the energy transition that risk replicating the harmful patterns of fossil fuel extraction and, instead, advocate for transformative policies that ensure human rights and gender equality as central to building climate-resilient societies rooted in dignity, justice and planetary well-being.

What's next?

We will continue to challenge approaches that treat energy transition as merely a technical shift, instead positioning it as an opportunity to reimagine economies and societies rooted in dignity for all, with particular attention to communities in the Global South who have contributed least to the climate emergency yet are most exposed to its worst effects.

We will connect community-level evidence and the lived experiences of those on the frontlines of extractive policies to national reform and global norm-setting, breaking down silos between human rights, gender, and climate movements, and advancing a shared vision that recognises just transitions as not only fundamental to achieving climate-resilient and sustainable societies, but as transformative pathways that advance social and gender equality, redistribute power and resources equitably, and ensure that energy systems serve the public good rather than profit.

We will mainstream rights-based and genderjust transition priorities in key multilateral spaces (particularly, within the Just Transition Work Programme and the to-be-developed Just Transition Mechanism, within the UNFCCC) to guarantee that just transitions are advanced at all levels.

We will also translate our work, through strategic advocacy, into at least two concrete policy wins, whether promoted, adopted, implemented, or scaled, in priority countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa, or Kenya), ensuring these policies align with human rights standards, centre gender equality, and reflect the needs and views of affected communities.

We will build momentum for the progressive recognition of the right to sustainable energy to shift dominant narratives away from purely extractive solutions that sideline gendered impacts, community participation, and Global South perspectives.

Economic Justice and Climate Finance

Our work has transformed the global discussion on fiscal policy in a more just, emancipatory and sustainable direction. Our approach has combined both high-level, expert contributions within decisionmaking circles, with bold, impactful work on narrative change with the general public.

We have been instrumental in the inclusion of human rights as a guiding principle of the future United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, a multilateral instrument with the potential of raising approx. USD 492 billion per year in public revenues currently foregone to global tax abuse. In the process leading to the ‘Compromiso de Sevilla’ decided at FfD4, we proposed and succeeded in creating a specific human rights workstream within the Civil Society Financing for Development Mechanism, which was critical to ensure that explicit commitments on the matter were included in the negotiating outcome. In a context of cutbacks in multilateral institutions, we have amplified the capacities of technical experts, providing rigorous technical support and leveraging our influence to ensure the enactments of groundbreaking standard-setting instruments, such as the 2025 UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Statement on Fiscal Policy and Human Rights, and the first ex oficio hearing on the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights on Fiscal and Economic Policies to Address Poverty and Structural Inequality, leading to an upcoming thematic resolution on the matter. We have also bridged the silos between multilateral tax discussions and climate finance debates, promoting ambitious financing commitments to increase international and domestic resource mobilisation during COP 28, 29 and 30.

At the regional level, our engagement with fiscal cooperation platforms such as the Platform for Fiscal Cooperation of Latin America and the Caribbean (PTLAC), where we are member of its Civil Society Consultative Council, and the African Anti-IFFs Policy Tracker, for which we participated in the pilot mission in Ivory Coast together with Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), have been critical in cementing a growing engagement between tax administrations and ministries of finance with international legal experts, exploring actionable and transformative initiatives, such as the taxation of high-net-worth individuals, beneficial ownership registries and corporate countryby-country reports, to be implemented at the international level.

At the local level, our interventions in fiscal reform debates in Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Nigeria have contributed to shaping legislative outcomes in a more progressive, rights-compliant direction.

As for our leadership in narrative change, we have a measurable track record in delivering tailored, innovative campaigns which have decisively expanded economic justice constituencies by appealing to a broader tent. In Latin America and the Caribbean, we created the ‘Date Cuenta’ campaign, coordinating over 40 organisations across civil society to deliver plain language, innovative messaging connecting progressive fiscal reforms to the financing of health, education and social protection. ‘Date Cuenta’ generated over 55 original campaign messages that were tailored to the realities of seven priority countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Honduras) and disseminated in Spanish, Portuguese and English. In doing so, we convened more than 65 online co-creation workshops with partners, coordinating a unified communications strategy which combined digital outreach, press and media coverage, and collaboration with influencers. Ultimately, ‘Date Cuenta’ resulted in more than 60,000 interactions on social media, coverage in major regional and international media outlets, including El País, Deutsche Welle, Bloomberg and France 24, and the participation of at least 63 social media influencers through 58 dedicated publications. In collaboration with Fundación Gabo and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, we also organised a two-day workshop in Bogota with 20 journalists from 13 countries, building a regional network trained in a human rights-based approach to fiscal policy that has since generated published media coverage on outlets such as La Diaria, Ciper, El Diario Ar and Milenio. Through ‘Date Cuenta’ and our regional advocacy, we strengthened civil society engagement in key processes, including the Financing for Development track and FfD4, co-organised highlevel dialogues with states and civil society from Latin America and Africa.

What's next?

We will shape the UN Tax Convention and its Protocols so they embed human rights principles, and we will stay engaged through follow-up processes (including the expected Conference of the Parties) to support effective implementation. We will keep linking tax and climate finance so that new resources mobilised through fiscal cooperation are channelled to adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage, in line with UNFCCC commitments.

Public Services for Care Societies

We have translated participatory research into accountability and policy outcomes.

In Ivory Coast, our work with Mouvement Ivoirien des Droits Humains and affected communities since 2023 exposed how privatisation and lack of accountability restrict access to quality healthcare. It contributed to the closure of 1,022 illegal private health centres, an executive instrument strengthening the regulation of private hospitals across the country, and the creation of a permanent complaints management committee in healthcare through a bylaw issued by the prefect of Gagnoa. Partners engaged through this process also advanced concrete improvements at facility level: members of the Gagnoa Midwives Association who took part in the participatory action research pooled resources to renovate the neonatal unit of the Regional Hospital, and the Director of the Gagnoa General Hospital launched an action plan to expand services and improve patient reception, with the facility receiving the award for best hospital in the country in 2025.

In Kenya, our research with the Mathare Education Taskforce documented the absence of public schools and the expansion of private provision, evidencing impacts on households and caregivers and strengthening demands for free, quality public education. This work contributed to stronger community agency and collective organisation, alongside ongoing strategies ranging from communications to litigation to secure a public school in the area, some involving GI-ESCR and others led independently.

Across Africa, this work is complemented by a multi-country study examining the human rights implications of austerity in education and health, including how regressive fiscal policies, rising debt burdens and persistent underinvestment undermine the financing and delivery of public services.

In Latin America, from 29 November to 2 December 2021, over a thousand representatives from over one hundred countries, from grassroots movements, advocacy, human rights, and development organisations, feminist movements, trade unions, and other civil society organisations, met in Santiago, Chile, and virtually, to discuss the critical role of public services for our future. Following the meeting, the Santiago Declaration on Public Services was adopted to demand universal access to quality, gender-transformative and equitable public services as the foundation of a fair and just society.

We are currently advancing work on care systems, linking public services and fiscal justice through integrated research, advocacy and communications, including a regional campaign framing care as a collective responsibility requiring sustained public investment.

What's next?

In Ivory Coast, we will evaluate and strengthen the complaints management committee and position it as a replicable model for other health facilities. In Kenya, we will support the Mathare community to co-design a model public school for Mabatini and Ngei wards, grounded in human rights standards. Building on our multi-country austerity study, we will drive national advocacy on financing for education and health: advancing reforms in Ghana; launching a fiscal policy and public services financing agenda in Kenya through the CESCR process and targeted coalition work; and, in Nigeria, using the new tax acts in force since 1 January 2026 to catalyse a national accountability campaign for adequately funded, quality public services. In Latin America, we will amplify locally led care pilots across 8 countries and turn lessons into influence—advancing care policies that strengthen care organisations, protect care workers’ rights, support unpaid caregivers, include disability and family networks, and redistribute care more equitably.