In August 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) issued the first-ever ruling from an international tribunal about the right to care. In Consultative Opinion 31, the IACHR affirmed three dimensions to care as a human right: the right to be cared for, the right to give care, and the right to self-care. The IACHR established that care constitutes a “universal human necessity and an indispensable condition for enjoying dignified existence” and that care, as a human right, sustains other human rights, like the right to health (IACHR 2025a). The IACHR further expressed concern about the unequal distribution of care burdens and called upon governments to establish measures that would advance the human right to care based on “social and familial co-responsibility … and the principles of equality and non-discrimination” (IACHR 2025a). The ruling profoundly reconceptualizes care’s normative and practical dimensions. If care is a human right with shared responsibility underlying its realization, then governments are obligated to provide care. Care becomes a public good that can be demanded, rather than a private cost that (mostly women) must bear.
The IACHR landmark ruling closely matches the feminist vision of “caring societies,” where those who require care can trust they will receive it and where care work becomes valued, remunerated, and provided in ways that recognize and reduce its traditional gendered and racialized distribution (Chatzidakis et al. Reference Chatzidakis, Hakim, Litter and Rottenberg2020; Elson Reference Elson2017; Glen Reference Glenn2000). The IACHR ruling encapsulates and extends a broader political shift in Latin America toward a rights-based approach to care policy (Esquivel Reference Esquivel2017; Mahon Reference Mahon2024; Villegas Plá Reference Villegas Plá2025). Women’s movements and feminist policymakers have steered countries and cities in adopting potentially transformative care policies, from universal care systems to mandates factoring unpaid care work into national accounts. Bolstering these policy innovations are two regional accords, the 2022 Buenos Aires Commitment and the 2025 Tlatelolco Commitment, which outline a “new sustainable development paradigm” called “the care society” (ECLAC 2022; 2025). This essay highlights how these developments capture Latin America’s efforts to alter the institutions, norms, and practices that govern the distribution of caring responsibilities, focusing on unpaid carers. For this particular group, innovative care policies shift how states value the invisible labor traditionally undertaken by women in the home.
Policy Innovations Ahead of the Curve
Questions of unpaid care — and the unsustainability of this labor within existing, neoliberal economic development models — became newly salient during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic pushed national and international policy conversations about caring societies forward (Heintz, Staab, and Turquet Reference Heintz, Staab and Turquet2021), but Latin America already had taken steps toward implementing at least one pillar of care justice: making an economic case for care and moving care to the public sphere.
Ecuador’s 2009 constitution recognizes the economic value of unremunerated work performed in the home, and Bolivia’s 2008 constitution recognizes unpaid care work and requires this work to be quantified in public accounts. In 2010, Colombia passed Law 1413, mandating the calculation and inclusion of unpaid household work into the national statistical system. The 2017 Mexico City constitution establishes a right to receive care, stating that “Every person has the right to care that sustains their life …. The authorities shall establish a care system that provides universal, accessible, relevant, sufficient and quality public services” (Gobierno de la Ciudad de Mexico 2017, 24).
These constitutional and legal frameworks fueled policy changes. Governments began conducting time use surveys to gather quantitative evidence of care work’s gendered distribution. For the feminist state-society networks already mobilized around care, time use surveys became important resources in advocating for unpaid carers and for building universal care systems that would shift care from the private to the public sphere. In Uruguay, feminist academics and policymakers within the women’s ministry and the national statistical office carried out time use surveys in 2003, 2007, and 2013 (Aguirre et al. Reference Aguirre, Batthyány, Genta and Perrotta2014). For instance, the 2013 survey revealed that women perform on average twice as much care work as men, and that women’s care of dependents increases as family incomes decrease, suggesting that women more than men trade waged for unwaged labor (Cafaro Reference Cafaro and Laura2019). In 2010, a left-wing government came to power and formed a care policy working group, including academics, activists, and policymakers working on the time use surveys (Aguirre et al. Reference Aguirre, Batthyány, Genta and Perrotta2014). The working group recommended a universal care system integrating childcare, eldercare, and care for dependent adults — with the time use data as their evidence. In 2015, Uruguay created the National Integrated Care System, defining care as a universal right and covering services for both the cared-for and the carers.
Colombia’s 2010 law similarly requires the National Administrative Department of Statistics to measure unpaid care work, including via periodic time use surveys. Law 1413 also mandates the creation of oversight bodies, leading policymakers, academics, trade union members, and civil society leaders to create the Roundtable for Feminist Economy and the Intersectoral Roundtable of the Care Economy.Footnote
1 As in Uruguay, the time use surveys helped this feminist state-society coalition seek policy change, culminating in Colombia’s 2023 adoption of a universal care system (Piscopo and Stallone Reference Piscopo and Stallone2025).
Venezuela (2021), Chile (2024), and Panama (2024) have also adopted universal care systems, alongside cities like Cochabamba, Bolivia (2019), and Bogotá, Colombia (2020). Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico City, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru all have initiatives pending. The successful and proposed statutes all use similar language, conceptualizing care as a right that includes carers and the cared-for; tying care to sustainable development and human development; and, echoing feminist political economists (Elson Reference Elson2017), citing the “3Rs” of recognizing, reducing, and redistributing gendered care burdens (Villegas Plá Reference Villegas Plá2025). Many, like Chile, use the tripartite framing that the IACHR would later formalize, enumerating the right to receive care, give care, and enjoy self-care. In this way, universal care systems do not merely expand the welfare state. They also redistribute care tasks across state and society, thus expanding and reconfiguring the state’s role in care provisioning.
A Shared Regional Framework for the Care Society
The Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries of Latin America share a political and cultural milieu, with policymakers and activists meeting in regional policy fora to advance best practices. These interchanges illuminate how common normative frameworks and policy templates come to govern the region: feminist actors in state and society develop the ideas; they share their innovations horizontally and vertically, via convenings organized by the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and other organizations; and these bodies then produce accords that are transmitted back to the national and subnational levels and are leveraged anew by women’s movements and policymakers. These subnational, national, and regional policy conversations happen in parallel. For instance, while Latin American governments sought to follow Uruguay and design universal care systems, the OAS developed its own template, releasing its model law for universal care systems in 2022. Argentina requested the IACHR’s consultative opinion on a human right to care in 2023, leading 129 organizations representing more than 265 different actors from primarily Latin America to submit evidence. The outpouring of written evidence made the case the second-most participatory process in the IACHR’s history (IACHR 2025b).
Within this milieu, the ECLAC triennial conferences on women have proved pivotal (Mahon Reference Mahon2024). The conference accords dating to 2010 urged that governments address gendered care burdens as matters of human rights and social justice. The 2022 Buenos Aires Commitment, held in the pandemic’s aftermath, crystallized this vision of the care society. Again echoing longstanding arguments from feminist economists (Elson Reference Elson2017; Heintz, Staab, and Turquet Reference Heintz, Staab and Turquet2021; Himmelweit Reference Himmelweit2007), the Buenos Aires Commitment discusses the “multiplier effect” of care investments. The document argues that public care provisioning recognizes the rights of carers and the cared-for, while also boosting well-being and contributing to sustainable development (ECLAC 2022). The 2025 Tlatelolco Commitment — issued the same month as the IACHR’s Consultative Opinion 31 — solidified the “care society paradigm,” which “recognizes care as a lifelong necessity, the right to care as a human right, and care as a public good, work and sector that drives the economy as a whole” (ECLAC 2025). The Tlatelolco Commitment launches a decade to achieve this caring society, which it describes as a “political and economic transformation based on gender equality” (ECLAC 2025).
Evidencing the Transformative Approach
The transformative vision of the care society might invite skepticism about whether such lofty ideals can effectively translate into concrete change, but some governments have successfully aligned norms with practice. Take Bogotá’s universal care system, which was launched in 2020 under Claudia López, the city’s first woman and openly lesbian mayor. During her campaign, López signed a formal agreement with Bogotá’s women’s organizations, promising a municipal-wide care system. Following her election, López instructed the city’s Women’s Secretariat to design the system, with few ex-ante restrictions. Policymakers then conceived what became the flagship element of Bogotá’s care system: the manzanas de cuidado — Blocks of Care — community centers that provide respite, recreation, continuing education, economic empowerment, and legal services for unpaid carers, all free of charge.
The manzanas aim to return to carers the time and opportunities they forego by dedicating themselves to unpaid care. The Women’s Secretariat wanted services that would allow carers “to improve their quality of life and enjoy their rights” (Piscopo and Stallone Reference Piscopo and Stallone2025). For example, the manzanas’ childcare is not a continuous service that children attend full-time; rather, carers use the service while visiting the manzanas. Altogether, the manzanas offer more than 30 programs, including two educational courses that focus on women’s rights and the care economy. Observing one course, researchers watched instructors deliver explicitly feminist content, such as teaching women carers about their rights to non-discrimination and to distribute chores to other household members (Piscopo and Stallone Reference Piscopo and Stallone2025). As of July 2025, Bogotá operates 25 manzanas serving the city’s 20 localities. The manzanas have inspired care policy innovations elsewhere, again demonstrating policy diffusion across Latin America. Chile has opened “Chile Cares” centers and Mexico City launched its “Utopías.” Both initiatives pre-dated, but are now framed as part of, their governments’ moves toward universal care systems.
A long road exists between envisioning the caring society and achieving it, but Latin America has especially advanced in recognizing and redistributing unpaid care work. Feminist activists and policymakers across the region have generated remarkably coherent normative edifices and policy blueprints. Vanguard policies, like Bogotá’s manzanas del cuidado, demonstrate the alignment between the norms and practice around valuing unpaid carers. These developments exist alongside those focusing on workers in the care economy, such as the region-wide expansion of laws granting domestic workers formal labor protections (OAS 2022). Both within and beyond the region, instruments such as the IACHR’s Consultative Opinion 31 sustain efforts to address the under-resourcing of care services alongside the unjust distributions of care burdens along gendered, racialized, and class lines. The normative frameworks not only motivate policy innovation but also provide accountability when existing practice falls short. In this way, Latin America’s steps toward building a care society advance the rights of those receiving care and the carers.
In August 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) issued the first-ever ruling from an international tribunal about the right to care. In Consultative Opinion 31, the IACHR affirmed three dimensions to care as a human right: the right to be cared for, the right to give care, and the right to self-care. The IACHR established that care constitutes a “universal human necessity and an indispensable condition for enjoying dignified existence” and that care, as a human right, sustains other human rights, like the right to health (IACHR 2025a). The IACHR further expressed concern about the unequal distribution of care burdens and called upon governments to establish measures that would advance the human right to care based on “social and familial co-responsibility … and the principles of equality and non-discrimination” (IACHR 2025a). The ruling profoundly reconceptualizes care’s normative and practical dimensions. If care is a human right with shared responsibility underlying its realization, then governments are obligated to provide care. Care becomes a public good that can be demanded, rather than a private cost that (mostly women) must bear.
The IACHR landmark ruling closely matches the feminist vision of “caring societies,” where those who require care can trust they will receive it and where care work becomes valued, remunerated, and provided in ways that recognize and reduce its traditional gendered and racialized distribution (Chatzidakis et al. Reference Chatzidakis, Hakim, Litter and Rottenberg2020; Elson Reference Elson2017; Glen Reference Glenn2000). The IACHR ruling encapsulates and extends a broader political shift in Latin America toward a rights-based approach to care policy (Esquivel Reference Esquivel2017; Mahon Reference Mahon2024; Villegas Plá Reference Villegas Plá2025). Women’s movements and feminist policymakers have steered countries and cities in adopting potentially transformative care policies, from universal care systems to mandates factoring unpaid care work into national accounts. Bolstering these policy innovations are two regional accords, the 2022 Buenos Aires Commitment and the 2025 Tlatelolco Commitment, which outline a “new sustainable development paradigm” called “the care society” (ECLAC 2022; 2025). This essay highlights how these developments capture Latin America’s efforts to alter the institutions, norms, and practices that govern the distribution of caring responsibilities, focusing on unpaid carers. For this particular group, innovative care policies shift how states value the invisible labor traditionally undertaken by women in the home.
Policy Innovations Ahead of the Curve
Questions of unpaid care — and the unsustainability of this labor within existing, neoliberal economic development models — became newly salient during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic pushed national and international policy conversations about caring societies forward (Heintz, Staab, and Turquet Reference Heintz, Staab and Turquet2021), but Latin America already had taken steps toward implementing at least one pillar of care justice: making an economic case for care and moving care to the public sphere.
Ecuador’s 2009 constitution recognizes the economic value of unremunerated work performed in the home, and Bolivia’s 2008 constitution recognizes unpaid care work and requires this work to be quantified in public accounts. In 2010, Colombia passed Law 1413, mandating the calculation and inclusion of unpaid household work into the national statistical system. The 2017 Mexico City constitution establishes a right to receive care, stating that “Every person has the right to care that sustains their life …. The authorities shall establish a care system that provides universal, accessible, relevant, sufficient and quality public services” (Gobierno de la Ciudad de Mexico 2017, 24).
These constitutional and legal frameworks fueled policy changes. Governments began conducting time use surveys to gather quantitative evidence of care work’s gendered distribution. For the feminist state-society networks already mobilized around care, time use surveys became important resources in advocating for unpaid carers and for building universal care systems that would shift care from the private to the public sphere. In Uruguay, feminist academics and policymakers within the women’s ministry and the national statistical office carried out time use surveys in 2003, 2007, and 2013 (Aguirre et al. Reference Aguirre, Batthyány, Genta and Perrotta2014). For instance, the 2013 survey revealed that women perform on average twice as much care work as men, and that women’s care of dependents increases as family incomes decrease, suggesting that women more than men trade waged for unwaged labor (Cafaro Reference Cafaro and Laura2019). In 2010, a left-wing government came to power and formed a care policy working group, including academics, activists, and policymakers working on the time use surveys (Aguirre et al. Reference Aguirre, Batthyány, Genta and Perrotta2014). The working group recommended a universal care system integrating childcare, eldercare, and care for dependent adults — with the time use data as their evidence. In 2015, Uruguay created the National Integrated Care System, defining care as a universal right and covering services for both the cared-for and the carers.
Colombia’s 2010 law similarly requires the National Administrative Department of Statistics to measure unpaid care work, including via periodic time use surveys. Law 1413 also mandates the creation of oversight bodies, leading policymakers, academics, trade union members, and civil society leaders to create the Roundtable for Feminist Economy and the Intersectoral Roundtable of the Care Economy.Footnote 1 As in Uruguay, the time use surveys helped this feminist state-society coalition seek policy change, culminating in Colombia’s 2023 adoption of a universal care system (Piscopo and Stallone Reference Piscopo and Stallone2025).
Venezuela (2021), Chile (2024), and Panama (2024) have also adopted universal care systems, alongside cities like Cochabamba, Bolivia (2019), and Bogotá, Colombia (2020). Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico City, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru all have initiatives pending. The successful and proposed statutes all use similar language, conceptualizing care as a right that includes carers and the cared-for; tying care to sustainable development and human development; and, echoing feminist political economists (Elson Reference Elson2017), citing the “3Rs” of recognizing, reducing, and redistributing gendered care burdens (Villegas Plá Reference Villegas Plá2025). Many, like Chile, use the tripartite framing that the IACHR would later formalize, enumerating the right to receive care, give care, and enjoy self-care. In this way, universal care systems do not merely expand the welfare state. They also redistribute care tasks across state and society, thus expanding and reconfiguring the state’s role in care provisioning.
A Shared Regional Framework for the Care Society
The Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries of Latin America share a political and cultural milieu, with policymakers and activists meeting in regional policy fora to advance best practices. These interchanges illuminate how common normative frameworks and policy templates come to govern the region: feminist actors in state and society develop the ideas; they share their innovations horizontally and vertically, via convenings organized by the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and other organizations; and these bodies then produce accords that are transmitted back to the national and subnational levels and are leveraged anew by women’s movements and policymakers. These subnational, national, and regional policy conversations happen in parallel. For instance, while Latin American governments sought to follow Uruguay and design universal care systems, the OAS developed its own template, releasing its model law for universal care systems in 2022. Argentina requested the IACHR’s consultative opinion on a human right to care in 2023, leading 129 organizations representing more than 265 different actors from primarily Latin America to submit evidence. The outpouring of written evidence made the case the second-most participatory process in the IACHR’s history (IACHR 2025b).
Within this milieu, the ECLAC triennial conferences on women have proved pivotal (Mahon Reference Mahon2024). The conference accords dating to 2010 urged that governments address gendered care burdens as matters of human rights and social justice. The 2022 Buenos Aires Commitment, held in the pandemic’s aftermath, crystallized this vision of the care society. Again echoing longstanding arguments from feminist economists (Elson Reference Elson2017; Heintz, Staab, and Turquet Reference Heintz, Staab and Turquet2021; Himmelweit Reference Himmelweit2007), the Buenos Aires Commitment discusses the “multiplier effect” of care investments. The document argues that public care provisioning recognizes the rights of carers and the cared-for, while also boosting well-being and contributing to sustainable development (ECLAC 2022). The 2025 Tlatelolco Commitment — issued the same month as the IACHR’s Consultative Opinion 31 — solidified the “care society paradigm,” which “recognizes care as a lifelong necessity, the right to care as a human right, and care as a public good, work and sector that drives the economy as a whole” (ECLAC 2025). The Tlatelolco Commitment launches a decade to achieve this caring society, which it describes as a “political and economic transformation based on gender equality” (ECLAC 2025).
Evidencing the Transformative Approach
The transformative vision of the care society might invite skepticism about whether such lofty ideals can effectively translate into concrete change, but some governments have successfully aligned norms with practice. Take Bogotá’s universal care system, which was launched in 2020 under Claudia López, the city’s first woman and openly lesbian mayor. During her campaign, López signed a formal agreement with Bogotá’s women’s organizations, promising a municipal-wide care system. Following her election, López instructed the city’s Women’s Secretariat to design the system, with few ex-ante restrictions. Policymakers then conceived what became the flagship element of Bogotá’s care system: the manzanas de cuidado — Blocks of Care — community centers that provide respite, recreation, continuing education, economic empowerment, and legal services for unpaid carers, all free of charge.
The manzanas aim to return to carers the time and opportunities they forego by dedicating themselves to unpaid care. The Women’s Secretariat wanted services that would allow carers “to improve their quality of life and enjoy their rights” (Piscopo and Stallone Reference Piscopo and Stallone2025). For example, the manzanas’ childcare is not a continuous service that children attend full-time; rather, carers use the service while visiting the manzanas. Altogether, the manzanas offer more than 30 programs, including two educational courses that focus on women’s rights and the care economy. Observing one course, researchers watched instructors deliver explicitly feminist content, such as teaching women carers about their rights to non-discrimination and to distribute chores to other household members (Piscopo and Stallone Reference Piscopo and Stallone2025). As of July 2025, Bogotá operates 25 manzanas serving the city’s 20 localities. The manzanas have inspired care policy innovations elsewhere, again demonstrating policy diffusion across Latin America. Chile has opened “Chile Cares” centers and Mexico City launched its “Utopías.” Both initiatives pre-dated, but are now framed as part of, their governments’ moves toward universal care systems.
A long road exists between envisioning the caring society and achieving it, but Latin America has especially advanced in recognizing and redistributing unpaid care work. Feminist activists and policymakers across the region have generated remarkably coherent normative edifices and policy blueprints. Vanguard policies, like Bogotá’s manzanas del cuidado, demonstrate the alignment between the norms and practice around valuing unpaid carers. These developments exist alongside those focusing on workers in the care economy, such as the region-wide expansion of laws granting domestic workers formal labor protections (OAS 2022). Both within and beyond the region, instruments such as the IACHR’s Consultative Opinion 31 sustain efforts to address the under-resourcing of care services alongside the unjust distributions of care burdens along gendered, racialized, and class lines. The normative frameworks not only motivate policy innovation but also provide accountability when existing practice falls short. In this way, Latin America’s steps toward building a care society advance the rights of those receiving care and the carers.