Don´t miss any updates!
On the Ground
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 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.
