The Buenos Aires Commitment provides guidelines on how to overcome the care crisis affecting the region, says ECLAC

The region is undergoing a cascading crisis that exacerbates gender inequalities. Cascading crises refers to multiple and internationally interlinked crises in the health, care, energy, food and finance sectors, the growing challenges posed by global climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification and the high level of public indebtedness of many countries in the region. This development crisis threatens the progress achieved in the areas of gender equality, the guarantee of the rights of women, adolescents and girls in all their diversity, the exercise of their autonomy and sustainable development in the countries of the region. For this reason, the recent Buenos Aires Commitment, approved at the XV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbeanis a key instrument that provides guidelines on how to overcome the care crisis and move towards the care society, a proposal for social organization that allows a recovery with equality and sustainability.

This was stated by Ana Güezmes, Director of ECLAC’s Gender Affairs Division, during her participation in the IV Ibero-American Gender Conference. The panel also featured presentations by Cindy Quesada Hernández, Minister for the Status of Women of Costa Rica; Sandra Ribeiro, President of the Portuguese Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality; María Noel Vaeza, Regional Director of UN Women for Latin America and the Caribbean; and Marta Carballo de la Riva, Gender Coordinator of the Ibero-American General Secretariat.

“At the regional level we are facing a development crisis and another lost decade,” said Ana Güezmes. “For this reason, the response measures must be accompanied by actions that seek to build the foundations to advance in a transformational change, in a civilizing change like the one proposed by the care society.” The Buenos Aires Commitment, he added, guides us on how to move towards a new style of development, in which the sustainability of life is at the center of social organization, “a paradigm shift that places caring for people at the center , of those who care, self-care and care of the planet”.

In this sense, the Buenos Aires Commitment promotes measures to overcome the sexual division of labor and a fair social organization of care, within the framework of a new style of development that promotes gender equality in the economic, social and environmental dimensions. of sustainable development. Likewise, it recognizes care as a right of people to care, to be cared for and to exercise self-care based on the principles of equality, universality and social and gender co-responsibility, which must be shared by people from all sectors of society, families, communities, companies and the State. For this reason, it proposes that the Governments adopt regulatory frameworks that guarantee the right to care through policies and comprehensive care systems from the perspectives of gender, intersectionality, interculturality and human rights, and that include policies on time, resources, benefits and universal and quality public services in the territory. Likewise, it suggests encouraging the accounting of the multiplier effects of the care economy in terms of labor participation of women in their diversity, well-being, redistribution and growth of economies, as well as the macroeconomic impact of said care economy.

“The care society is the way for an equitable distribution of power, resources, time and work between women and men and to move to a style of development based on equality and the sustainability of life”, summarized Ana Güezmes . This new organization proposes a collective, multiscalar and intersectional horizon: it calls for transformative short-term public policies and cultural change to guarantee care”, she explained.

Finally, he invited the governments to take action to implement the commitments they made at the recent XV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean.

At this meeting, Ministers and High Authorities of Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women from 22 countries agreed on a Statement whose purpose is to strengthen the economic and social independence of women, end the various types of gender violence, as well as advance the equal and substantive participation of women in all their diversity. The document includes the Buenos Aires Commitment of the XV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and affirms that “the lack of recognition, redistribution and remuneration of care work is a reality in Ibero-American societies, and that, as part of a post-pandemic recovery and in favor of an inclusive, democratic and sustainable region, it is necessary for States to recognize care as a human right, making visible the social, economic and development value that care work disproportionately performed by women represents. women”.

The Declaration also maintains that “the creation of national care systems represents a historic opportunity to promote just and equitable societies, where women can develop under equal conditions, opportunities and use of time and, therefore, the redistribution of work of care allows the autonomy of women, in accordance with what was agreed in the Buenos Aires Commitment of the XV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America”. Likewise, it reiterates the need to implement various international agreements, including those commitments of the ECLAC Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Santo Domingo Declaration of the IV Ibero-American Gender Conference will be submitted to the heads of State and Government who will meet at the XXVIII Ibero-American Summit in March 2023.

During her mission in the Dominican Republic, Ana Güezmes also met with feminist organizations, in a meeting facilitated by the Faculty of Economics of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo and organized by the Research Center for Women’s Action (Cipaf) and the Feminist Forum. “Magaly Pineda”. Representatives of organizations that are members of that Forum and other civil society groups participated in this meeting. In that instance, the Director of the Gender Affairs Division shared the documents produced in the framework of the XV Regional Conference on Women.

The Director of the Gender Affairs Division also referred to the Regional Gender Agenda as a roadmap to advance women’s rights and autonomy in the region and presented the Buenos Aires Commitment. The conversation with the participants focused on how to implement these international commitments in the Dominican national agenda, and the role and participation of the feminist movement in it. Ana Güezmes also met with the Director of the National Statistics Office of the Dominican Republic, Miosotis Rivas, to discuss joint lines of work to continue developing and improving statistics with a gender perspective in the country and in the region.

The presentation of Ana Güezmes can be found here.

The Santo Domingo Declaration can be consulted here.