Library • Plan International - Girls' Rights Platform - Girls' rights are human rights: Positioning girls at the heart of the international agenda

Unpaid care work and women's human rights 2013, para. 97

Paragraph text: Policymakers should implement general measures, such as eliminating user fees in primary education and basic health care, including sexual and reproductive health care, and progressively implementing free universal health care. More specific measures adapting and reforming public services, directly guided by the need to alleviate unpaid work demands on women and girls, will also be necessary. Such measures might include free school food programmes; extended school day programmes; improvements to palliative care systems; and the introduction of household/community care capacity assessments to guide hospital discharge decisions.

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Paragraph text: The HIV/AIDS pandemic has severely disrupted and/or increased unpaid care work in many countries. Women are affected by the virus in greater numbers than men and also, in conjunction with girls, provide 70 to 90 per cent of HIV/AIDS care. Caring for an AIDS patient can increase the workload of a family caretaker by one third, so that scarce family financial resources, as well as women's time, are stretched even further. The Special Rapporteur has seen herself during country visits how in communities ravaged by HIV/AIDS the desperate care needs of the sick as well as orphans and other vulnerable children all too often go unmet by the State. Instead, grandmothers, aunts or older girls struggle to fill the care deficit. Moreover, the burden of caring is disproportionately borne by people living in poverty, especially in rural areas, even in those contexts where HIV is more common among urban, wealthier people.

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