In recent years, cascading crises, including the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, have highlighted the unjust social organization of care and the need for a new development model centred on care and the sustainability of life (ECLAC, 2022). These crises present an opportunity to design bold policies and to transition to a care society that prioritizes people and the planet (ECLAC, 2022).
In the Buenos Aires Commitment, adopted at the fifteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, the member States of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) agreed to transition to a care society, focusing on new areas for a transformative, gender-equal and sustainable recovery. They recognized care as a right to provide and receive care and to exercise self-care. The Regional Gender Agenda calls for the promotion of measures to overcome the sexual division of labour and move towards a fair social organization of care, in the framework of a new development model that fosters gender equality in the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The recognition of care as a right makes it necessary to strengthen the role of States at the national and subnational levels, through care policies and systems based on the principles of equality, universality and social and gender co-responsibility, including coordinated policies on time, resources, benefits and universal and quality public services in the territory.
The present document was prepared in response to the Buenos Aires Commitment, in which ECLAC was instructed to prepare a document on guiding principles for the design of policies, from a gender, intersectional and intercultural perspective and the perspective of territory, within the framework of human rights.
