The Second Committee of the General Assembly has adopted the resolution on “The Care Economy and its contribution to Sustainable Development” (A/C.2/80/L.30/Rev.1), presented by Chile and for which UN Women served as the Secretariat.
The draft was presented on behalf of a core group composed of Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Spain, Suriname, and Uruguay. Additional cosponsors include: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Moldova, Slovakia, South Africa, and Sweden.
The resolution includes the following highlights:
- Emphasis that care work—paid and unpaid—is essential to all other work and contributes to human, social, economic, and environmental well-being.
- Recognition that women and girls disproportionately carry out unpaid care work, limiting their education, employment, and decision-making opportunities, perpetuating gender inequality and the feminization of poverty, thus, comprehensive care and support systems can reduce women’s economic vulnerability and prevent intergenerational poverty.
- Encouragement for Member States, in accordance with their national priorities and capacities, to increase investment in the care economy, including by promoting strategic investments in care infrastructure and services that can support the creation of decent work, enable greater female labour-force participation, and improve well-being and human development outcomes.
- Call for the international community, including development partners, international financial institutions, multilateral and public development banks, and the private sector, to consider how to support national efforts to invest in and strengthen care and support systems.
- Request to the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its eighty-second session a report on the implementation of the present resolution and include in the provisional agenda of the 82nd session of the General Assembly a specific sub-item entitled “Contribution of the care economy to sustainable development”.
Citation
Contribution of the care economy to sustainable development, UN GA, 2nd Comm, 18th sess, Agenda Item 22. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4093712?ln=en&v=pdf