13/08/2025

A New Principle of Public Policy Recognizing Care as a Human Right in Latin America

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has just ruled on a request for an Advisory Opinion (AO) submitted by the Argentine Republic regarding the scope and implications of the right to care.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has just ruled on a request for an Advisory Opinion (AO) submitted by the Argentine Republic regarding the scope and implications of the right to care.

AO 31/25, published on August 7, 2025, constitutes a groundbreaking jurisprudential development by recognizing the “right to care” as an autonomous, enforceable, and structural human right, articulated in three fundamental dimensions: the right to provide care, the right to receive care, and the right to self-care.

Although it is not a judicial ruling in the strict sense, by issuing it, the Court sets precedent and marks an agenda related to the birth of a new principle of international public policy, one that is deeply connected to gender justice and collective co-responsibility in reproductive work.

The highest human rights tribunal in the Inter-American System pronounces itself on the obligations of the States Parties to the American Convention on Human Rights — among them, the Argentine Republic. Its approach represents a legal milestone, as it displaces, through normative interpretation, the patriarchal logic that has historically and almost exclusively placed the burden of care — understood as all tasks necessary for the reproduction and maintenance of life — on women’s shoulders.

These obligations, imposed on and attributed to women on the basis of gender, reproduce a structural social inequality that hinders their personal development, their insertion into the labor market, and the continuation of their education.

In this sense, the Court uses the concept of “care” as a touchstone and raises the flag of equal opportunities, dismantling gender inequality and imposing on States the duty to guarantee public and universal care systems. It links this human right with other fundamental rights, such as the rights to education, to work, and to social security.

In an act of substantive justice, the Court sets an agenda for all of Latin America.

Meanwhile, in the Argentine Republic: The inter-American recognition of a fundamental right in Alice’s Wonderland country

Down the rabbit hole.

For some time now, Argentines have fallen into a deep hole, where many things seem nonsensical, much like what happened to “Alice” in Lewis Carroll’s tale.

While the Inter-American Court of Human Rights marks a milestone in the region by recognizing the “right to care” as a human right of enormous implications, in Argentina — the very same country that, in May 2023, urged the Court to rule on this matter, thus originating that Advisory Opinion — everything unfolds as in that “wonderland” where Alice arrived after her fall.

Only that, in this rabbit hole, as soon as we land, we come face to face with the hungry eyes of a lion.

A country that — despite its enormous potential, natural resources, and human talent —, in terms of rights, is anything but “wonderful.” At least if we consider the dismantling of almost all gender public policies, as well as social protection and care policies, that we have been enduring since the inauguration of a government that identifies with so-called anarcho-capitalism… and considers health, education, social protection, and public services to be unnecessary expenses.

In a country that was once a pioneer in public care policies and in equal opportunities, a beacon in normative matters, today we face an objective fact that worsens the situation of many low-income families, especially women heading households with young children.

Not to mention that, historically, domestic and care tasks have fallen on women’s shoulders.

Today, moreover, many must “put food on the table” while caring.

Gone with the wind.

Since December 2023, and as part of the policy to reduce the size of the State, Argentines have witnessed the dissolution of agencies and spaces that designed care and containment policies for the most vulnerable sectors.

Among the most emblematic cases: the Ministry of Women, Genders, and Diversity was dissolved shortly after the start of the new government’s term.

The INADI (National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism) was also closed.

Beyond institutional changes, the most serious measure has been the defunding of programs such as the “National Plan for the Prevention of Unintentional Teenage Pregnancy.”

Likewise, the vast majority of initiatives related to addressing domestic and gender-based violence have been eliminated.

In public health, the budget cut exceeded 48%. This resulted in layoffs of health personnel, the elimination of the DADSE (which provided free cancer medication), the suspension of vaccination programs and control of diseases such as HIV, hepatitis, or tuberculosis, and an increase in deaths and outbreaks of preventable diseases.

The National Cancer Institute was closed, directly affecting key programs for the prevention and control of various types of cancer, pediatric care, palliative care, and epidemiological registries.

The Garrahan Hospital, a national emblem of pediatric care, is going through an unprecedented crisis. Along with the brutal defunding, medical staff have denounced degrading conditions: wages below the poverty line, professional desertion, lack of supplies, and an institutional situation on the verge of collapse. In this scenario, workers and unions have described the measure as a “covert closure.”

In education, we are no better off: institutional changes and budget cuts have also been felt. The Ministry of Education was downgraded to a secretariat within the new Ministry of Human Capital, which meant a significant erosion of the state’s role in the area. In 2024, there was a historic cut in educational investment — the deepest in the last four decades — affecting both basic and higher education. The reductions exceeded 50% in infrastructure, teacher training, student scholarships, and, equally, in university funding.

In the labor field, the destruction of jobs, both in public employment and in the private sector due to the closure of SMEs, has been colossal. Not to mention the loss of workers’ purchasing power in the face of the imposition of a cap on union collective bargaining.

The inability to guarantee food, health, and education for families, in a country where “the public” is on the verge of extinction, also violates the right to care, to be cared for, and to self-care.

Unions as in “Don Quixote.”

Meanwhile, and facing the scrutiny and attacks of the major propaganda media that portray them to society as “privilege creators,” today trade unions in Argentina are the last line of protection against the abyss.

It is the unions that, through union-run health insurance funds, guarantee medical care to their members in a healthcare system on the brink of collapse. They also provide care spaces for workers’ children through nurseries, technical schools, and summer camps.

Wielding their Don Quixote sword — collective bargaining and collective labor agreements — they have achieved significant advances in gender equality in the workplace and in the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people. Many have promoted the extension of maternity leave; the creation of action plans toward equal opportunities so that women can access leadership positions or non-traditional roles; the implementation and enforcement of quotas for people with disabilities and for people from the LGBTIQ+ community; as well as the construction of lactation rooms to enable working mothers to reconcile motherhood with their professional development, maintaining breastfeeding after returning to work following childbirth.

All this, among many other benefits that do not constitute “privileges,” but rather “rights” for their members and even for those who are not members but belong to the industry.

Today in Argentina, from government policy, care policies are considered an expense and are being eliminated. Unions, with great effort — like Don Quixote against the windmills — not only fight to maintain them, but understand them as an investment.

The day after… implementation challenges.

Advisory Opinion 31/25 should stand as the normative standard-bearer of social justice in the region.

Consistently, and echoing what societies have long been demanding, it states that “care” is essential to guaranteeing other fundamental rights — such as health, education, work, a dignified life, equality, and social security — and warns that its absence generates structural inequality, especially for women, the elderly, people with disabilities, and historically marginalized groups.

In legal terms, this ruling marks a before and after in the Inter-American system: the States Parties to the American Convention on Human Rights are obligated to recognize, protect, and guarantee care as an enforceable right; they must design public policies, allocate resources, and establish regulatory frameworks to ensure its effective fulfillment, going beyond the traditional, family-centered, or merely welfare-based approach.

It could be said that this step brings equality to historically neglected sectors.

However, in Argentina — in the “Alice” country — and in a socio-political context marked by regression in terms of rights, achieving the materialization of this pronouncement, of this new “human right” whose recognition took so much effort to obtain, seems a task worthy of Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible.

Karina Navone is Secretary of Gender and Equality of Opportunities and Treatment of the SGBATOS, Co-Secretary of Social Action of the CGT, Alternate Representative of the Southern Cone to the World Women’s Committee of Public Services International (PSI), Member of the Women’s Committee of Argentina of PSI, and Member of the Women’s Table of the Trade Union Force.