This contribution is published as part of the UNRISD Think Piece Series Beyond Copenhagen: Rethinking Social Development for the 21st Century, which supports UNRISD’s efforts to shape the agenda of the upcoming Summit in Qatar in November 2025. This series brings together experts from academia, advocacy and policy practice to critically explore the achievements and shortcomings in the implementation of the 1995 Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action, current social development challenges, and transformative policies and drivers of positive change. We examine not only the policies and institutional reforms needed for social development and just transitions but also the roles of key actors in advancing social, economic and climate justice. Insights from this series will contribute to UNRISD’s work in shaping the Political Declaration of the Second World Summit for Social Development and its implementation, monitoring and follow-up.
Care work, ensuring the well-being of people and beings through attention and support, is central to the well-being of humankind and of the planet. For a forward-looking Second World Summit for Social Development—and social justice—we need to promote a rights-based understanding of care—the rights of those who require and of those who provide care. While the final version of the outcome document for the Summit includes several references to care policies, the approach remains largely economistic and instrumental. To move the needle for a transformative agenda and to bring together social development and social justice, the second WSSD needs to step forward assertively for rights-based care and care work.
There is an obvious normative reason to care about care—the universal right to dignified care and care work. Care work is central to the well-being of humankind and of the planet. Care can be understood, very broadly, as ensuring the well-being of people and beings through attention and support. For a forward-looking Second World Summit for Social Development—and social justice—we therefore need to outline a rights-based understanding of care—the rights of those who require and of those who provide care.
Prior to the member states’ negotiations, the UN Inter Agency Task Force had addressed “access to care and decent care work” in their briefs on eradicating poverty, on achieving full and productive employment and decent work, and on social inclusion. The co-facilitators’ Food for Thought paper issued for an early round of discussions had also systemically situated care in the context of social policy and a social contract.
The agreed political declaration of September 2025, negotiated by member states, briefly addresses care in connection with decent work (point 3r) and with gender and women’s empowerment (point 11b). The text argues for formalizing work and notes the “multiplier effects” of care work; it also makes the case for equitable care work and shared responsibility within the household and the family. This is welcome if we understand these points as support to improving care work in general, and as advocating for paid care work to adhere to all decent work standards and commitments.
However, at closer scrutiny, it reflects an economistic reasoning, instrumentalizing care work for economic growth. Moreover, it depoliticizes care because it does not address the relational, hierarchical dimensions of care. We know that migrant and racialized women provide much of the underpaid care work as they accept—insecure—employment in slightly richer economies in exploitative global care chains, leaving behind their own families and neglecting their self-care. We also know that in patriarchal families, women and girl children carry two to three times the share of the care workload of male family members, simplistically measured in work hours (albeit not in foregone opportunities).
Fundamentally, the Doha declaration itself or follow-up plans would need to integrate such evidence into a progressive notion of care and its argument for inclusive and rights-based social development: how care ought to be understood, positioned, negotiated, and where applicable, remunerated.
Fortunately, over the past 30 years since the Copenhagen Summit for Social Development, liberating, rights-based, potentially transformative understandings of care have indeed emerged. These newer understandings recognize the centrality of both paid and unpaid care work for human rights and social and gender justice, for a rights-centred notion of the economy, as well as for “decent” work and social inclusion and to overcome poverty. These approaches analyse the power hierarchies in paid and unpaid care work. They moreover contextualize care work with the principles and objectives of just transition and climate and environmental protection objectives.
Here are some examples for consideration:
Academics, including in the UN, explored political economy dependencies in care work, highlighting the tensions between paid and unpaid work in industrialized and in low-income countries. Others developed the eco-social concept of the purple economy. As an alternative to austerity policies and to address business cycle recessions, this “purple”, feminist approach recommends promoting salaried care work in the public sector. It would create jobs that provide dignity to carers and those cared for, while reducing negative impacts on the environment as a share of the country’s employment transitions from the commodity resource-based manufacturing sector to the services sector. The purple economy would be (almost) carbon-neutral, save for the little energy required for household functioning and mobility.
The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty highlighted the human rights dimensions of care work, illustrating how unequal care responsibilities often condemn women to poverty. The logical recommendation is for governments to improve women’s rights and their actual access to public services, care services and infrastructure. In the same vein, UN Women unpacked social policy connections between care and public services, including the case for universal social protection throughout the life cycle to avoid child poverty and women’s poverty in old age.
Care work has also been conceptualized as an element of a new form of social contract. In connection with the ILO, the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors called for “systemic transformations”, “to move away from the GDP growth narrative, and repurpose our economic systems and policy making, so that the economy first serves the long-term wellbeing of people and the planet, and supports the work of caring for each other and for our natural environment.” It posits care as a collective responsibility.
A further dimension of care as a collective responsibility is its role in situations of heightened political oppression, or outright conflict. In protest movements, activists are becoming more sensitive to and proactive in the need for and right to care, in some cases providing mutual support so protesters reconcile their roles as activists with their care responsibilities.
As a globally-informed position, bringing together actors and discourses from South and North, governments and civil society, the Global Alliance for Care has deepened the care concept to address intersectionality and gender identity, structural inequalities, climate and care, and progressive masculinities. It notes the need for self-care as well.
Beyond conceptual approaches, the past decades have developed concrete policy ideas and offer applied practice examples for the care economy. Most fundamentally, there are recommendations to adhere to decent work regulations with living wage levels, agreed work and leisure hours, paid leave, and the right to medical coverage and social security. There are calls to ratify and respect the ILO convention on domestic work and the ILO recommendation on the care economy. To support family-based unpaid care, policy demands include the availability of quality (day) care services for children, the elderly, and for persons living with disabilities. For those in formal employment, demands—and some cases, practice—include paid, equitably-shared parental leave combined with job-return guarantees, and the imputing of care time into pension allowances. Such policies can integrate decent work as well as gender justice goals.
What does this imply for Doha and beyond?
Ideally, if negotiations are to be inclusive, the conceptual approaches, demands and practices described above concerning care could find their way into the political declaration when it is finalized and adopted in Doha. They can become the connecter between the three pillars of the summit—poverty eradication, decent work and social integration.
In any case, progressive approaches to care need to feature prominently in follow-up plans of action. In this vein, civil society, trade unions and academics are formulating comprehensive proposals encompassing the right to care which will inform the civil society forum at the Summit. We remember a similar impetus from political actors at the first Summit for Social Development who helped push the Copenhagen outcome into a more progressive direction.
Apart from the normative rationale for a rights-based approach to care, there is also a pragmatic rationale to promote it: the Second World Summit for Social Development operates in competition with numerous other multi-, plurilateral, thematic and regional summits. If it is to make a dent in global and national discourse, and if it purports to advance the SDGs and shape the next development platform post-2030, it needs to reflect the state of the art in terms of the care discourse. To move the needle for a transformative agenda, to bring together social development and social justice, the 2nd WSSD needs to step forward assertively for rights-based care and care work.
This article reflects the views of the author(s) and does not necessarily represent those of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
Link to the article.
Why Care About Care?
This contribution is published as part of the UNRISD Think Piece Series Beyond Copenhagen: Rethinking Social Development for the 21st Century, which supports UNRISD’s efforts to shape the agenda of the upcoming Summit in Qatar in November 2025. This series brings together experts from academia, advocacy and policy practice to critically explore the achievements and shortcomings in the implementation of the 1995 Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action, current social development challenges, and transformative policies and drivers of positive change. We examine not only the policies and institutional reforms needed for social development and just transitions but also the roles of key actors in advancing social, economic and climate justice. Insights from this series will contribute to UNRISD’s work in shaping the Political Declaration of the Second World Summit for Social Development and its implementation, monitoring and follow-up.
Care work, ensuring the well-being of people and beings through attention and support, is central to the well-being of humankind and of the planet. For a forward-looking Second World Summit for Social Development—and social justice—we need to promote a rights-based understanding of care—the rights of those who require and of those who provide care. While the final version of the outcome document for the Summit includes several references to care policies, the approach remains largely economistic and instrumental. To move the needle for a transformative agenda and to bring together social development and social justice, the second WSSD needs to step forward assertively for rights-based care and care work.
There is an obvious normative reason to care about care—the universal right to dignified care and care work. Care work is central to the well-being of humankind and of the planet. Care can be understood, very broadly, as ensuring the well-being of people and beings through attention and support. For a forward-looking Second World Summit for Social Development—and social justice—we therefore need to outline a rights-based understanding of care—the rights of those who require and of those who provide care.
Prior to the member states’ negotiations, the UN Inter Agency Task Force had addressed “access to care and decent care work” in their briefs on eradicating poverty, on achieving full and productive employment and decent work, and on social inclusion. The co-facilitators’ Food for Thought paper issued for an early round of discussions had also systemically situated care in the context of social policy and a social contract.
The agreed political declaration of September 2025, negotiated by member states, briefly addresses care in connection with decent work (point 3r) and with gender and women’s empowerment (point 11b). The text argues for formalizing work and notes the “multiplier effects” of care work; it also makes the case for equitable care work and shared responsibility within the household and the family. This is welcome if we understand these points as support to improving care work in general, and as advocating for paid care work to adhere to all decent work standards and commitments.
However, at closer scrutiny, it reflects an economistic reasoning, instrumentalizing care work for economic growth. Moreover, it depoliticizes care because it does not address the relational, hierarchical dimensions of care. We know that migrant and racialized women provide much of the underpaid care work as they accept—insecure—employment in slightly richer economies in exploitative global care chains, leaving behind their own families and neglecting their self-care. We also know that in patriarchal families, women and girl children carry two to three times the share of the care workload of male family members, simplistically measured in work hours (albeit not in foregone opportunities).
Fundamentally, the Doha declaration itself or follow-up plans would need to integrate such evidence into a progressive notion of care and its argument for inclusive and rights-based social development: how care ought to be understood, positioned, negotiated, and where applicable, remunerated.
Fortunately, over the past 30 years since the Copenhagen Summit for Social Development, liberating, rights-based, potentially transformative understandings of care have indeed emerged. These newer understandings recognize the centrality of both paid and unpaid care work for human rights and social and gender justice, for a rights-centred notion of the economy, as well as for “decent” work and social inclusion and to overcome poverty. These approaches analyse the power hierarchies in paid and unpaid care work. They moreover contextualize care work with the principles and objectives of just transition and climate and environmental protection objectives.
Here are some examples for consideration:
Academics, including in the UN, explored political economy dependencies in care work, highlighting the tensions between paid and unpaid work in industrialized and in low-income countries. Others developed the eco-social concept of the purple economy. As an alternative to austerity policies and to address business cycle recessions, this “purple”, feminist approach recommends promoting salaried care work in the public sector. It would create jobs that provide dignity to carers and those cared for, while reducing negative impacts on the environment as a share of the country’s employment transitions from the commodity resource-based manufacturing sector to the services sector. The purple economy would be (almost) carbon-neutral, save for the little energy required for household functioning and mobility.
The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty highlighted the human rights dimensions of care work, illustrating how unequal care responsibilities often condemn women to poverty. The logical recommendation is for governments to improve women’s rights and their actual access to public services, care services and infrastructure. In the same vein, UN Women unpacked social policy connections between care and public services, including the case for universal social protection throughout the life cycle to avoid child poverty and women’s poverty in old age.
Care work has also been conceptualized as an element of a new form of social contract. In connection with the ILO, the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors called for “systemic transformations”, “to move away from the GDP growth narrative, and repurpose our economic systems and policy making, so that the economy first serves the long-term wellbeing of people and the planet, and supports the work of caring for each other and for our natural environment.” It posits care as a collective responsibility.
A further dimension of care as a collective responsibility is its role in situations of heightened political oppression, or outright conflict. In protest movements, activists are becoming more sensitive to and proactive in the need for and right to care, in some cases providing mutual support so protesters reconcile their roles as activists with their care responsibilities.
As a globally-informed position, bringing together actors and discourses from South and North, governments and civil society, the Global Alliance for Care has deepened the care concept to address intersectionality and gender identity, structural inequalities, climate and care, and progressive masculinities. It notes the need for self-care as well.
Beyond conceptual approaches, the past decades have developed concrete policy ideas and offer applied practice examples for the care economy. Most fundamentally, there are recommendations to adhere to decent work regulations with living wage levels, agreed work and leisure hours, paid leave, and the right to medical coverage and social security. There are calls to ratify and respect the ILO convention on domestic work and the ILO recommendation on the care economy. To support family-based unpaid care, policy demands include the availability of quality (day) care services for children, the elderly, and for persons living with disabilities. For those in formal employment, demands—and some cases, practice—include paid, equitably-shared parental leave combined with job-return guarantees, and the imputing of care time into pension allowances. Such policies can integrate decent work as well as gender justice goals.
What does this imply for Doha and beyond?
Ideally, if negotiations are to be inclusive, the conceptual approaches, demands and practices described above concerning care could find their way into the political declaration when it is finalized and adopted in Doha. They can become the connecter between the three pillars of the summit—poverty eradication, decent work and social integration.
In any case, progressive approaches to care need to feature prominently in follow-up plans of action. In this vein, civil society, trade unions and academics are formulating comprehensive proposals encompassing the right to care which will inform the civil society forum at the Summit. We remember a similar impetus from political actors at the first Summit for Social Development who helped push the Copenhagen outcome into a more progressive direction.
Apart from the normative rationale for a rights-based approach to care, there is also a pragmatic rationale to promote it: the Second World Summit for Social Development operates in competition with numerous other multi-, plurilateral, thematic and regional summits. If it is to make a dent in global and national discourse, and if it purports to advance the SDGs and shape the next development platform post-2030, it needs to reflect the state of the art in terms of the care discourse. To move the needle for a transformative agenda, to bring together social development and social justice, the 2nd WSSD needs to step forward assertively for rights-based care and care work.
This article reflects the views of the author(s) and does not necessarily represent those of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
Link to the article.
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