A/68/293
I. Introduction
1.
The present report is submitted by the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty
and human rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, in accordance with Human
Rights Council resolution 17/13.
2.
The present report benefits from an expert meeting convened jointly with the
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN-Women
on 13 and 14 May 2013. 1 The Special Rapporteur also disseminated a questionnaire
on the topic of unpaid care work and she wishes to thank those civil society
organizations and national human rights institutions that responded; the responses
are available on the mandate’s website. 2
II. Scope and rationale of the report
3.
For the purposes of this report, unpaid care work includes domestic work
(meal preparation, cleaning, washing clothes, water and fuel collection) and direct
care of persons (including children, older persons and persons with disabilities, as
well as able-bodied adults) carried out in homes and communities.
4.
The line between unpaid care work and other types of unpaid work — for
example in subsistence agriculture or family businesses — is not always easy to
draw. 3 However, unpaid (non-care) work is included in calculations of gross
domestic product (GDP) and systems of national accounts and increasingly
recognized in development programming and food security initiatives. In contrast,
domestic work and caring for people has remained largely invisible in economic
calculations, statistics, policy and political discourse, and is commonly undervalued
by society and policy makers, despite the fact that its monetary value is estimated at
from 10 to over 50 per cent of GDP. 4 Even human rights advocates and monitoring
bodies have so far paid little sustained attention to the human rights implications of
unpaid care work. This is highly problematic, given that care not only contributes to
well-being, social development and economic growth but also has an enormous
impact on the enjoyment of human rights of both caregivers and care receivers.
5.
Considering the limited length of this report and the mandate’s focus on extreme
poverty and human rights, no attempt is made to assess the extensive issue of human
rights and care holistically. Rather, the report focuses specifically on the human
rights of unpaid caregivers, in particular women living in poverty who provide
unpaid care. Other relevant human rights implications of unpaid care work — such
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13-42271
Information available from www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/UnpaidWork.aspx.
See www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/UnpaidWork.aspx.
For a summary of the distinctions, see Shahra Razavi, “The political and social economy of care
in a development context”, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD),
Gender and Development Programme Paper No. 3, June 2007.
Depending on the country/region and measurement used. An UNRISD study of six countries
estimated 10 to 39 per cent (see Debbie Budlender, “The statistical evidence on care and non-care
work across six countries”, UNRISD, Gender and Development Programme Paper No. 4,
December 2008), but measurements in different countries have been higher. Estimates for 20092010 in Australia suggest that the amount of unpaid care work undertaken was around 21.4 billion
hours, equivalent to 50.6 per cent of GDP (S. A. Hoenig and A. R. E. Page, Counting on Care
Work in Australia, report prepared by AECgroup Limited for economic Security4Women,
Australia, 2012).
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