The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ “Right to Care”

New directions for disability advocacy and organizing in the Americas?

This is a past event

On August 7, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights broke new ground in international human rights law by recognizing the “right to care” as an autonomous and enforceable right. Its Advisory Opinion recognizes care as an essential and universal human need on which functioning societies and humanity itself depend. Building on its innovative and ample “vida digna” (dignified life) jurisprudence, the Court outlined an array of state obligations to ensure that individuals, especially members of marginalized groups, can access forms of care necessary to ensure a dignified existence. Among them, states must recognize the economic and social value of both unpaid and paid forms of care, including by adopting comprehensive care systems, parental leave and flexible work policies, and social security nets; reduce the burdens and barriers that make caregiving inaccessible, unsafe, or inequitable; and redistribute care responsibilities more equitably among the state, the private sector, communities, and families. As with other advisory opinions, states are now on notice that their obligations under the American Convention on Human Rights will be interpreted in light of the Court’s novel conception of a “right to care”.

Given the breadth of the Court’s articulation of states’ care-related human rights obligations, it remains unclear how states might seek to align their laws, policies, and programs with Advisory Opinion 31/25. As states adjust to this new conceptualization, this event will focus on how the “right to care”  might inform the legal advocacy and community organizing activities of civil society actors throughout the Americas. Stakeholders in diverse national contexts may respond differently to contextualized challenges. In Colombia, where the Constitutional Court has also recognized a human right to care, at least one community has striven to organize a model care delivery system aimed specifically at persons with disabilities. Elsewhere, however, such as, in Argentina, it is unclear how much force the Court’s advisory opinion might have to counter so-called “chainsaw” austerity measures that threaten access to services for wide swaths of the population. At the same time, in the United States, where advocates for low-income and marginalized groups are still reeling from unprecedented cuts to federal assistance programs that threaten to upend persons with disabilities’ and older persons’ access to home and community-based services, can advocates for access to long-term supports and services learn from the Court’s innovation?

At this HPOD event, co-organized with the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, panelists will bring to bear their decades of research, advocacy, and organizing experience in support of marginalized groups’ access to critical services and supports to explore the opportunities and limits of the Court’s conceptualization of the “right to care” across the diverse contexts where they work.

Welcoming Remarks

Moderator

  • Alicia Yamin, Director, Global Health and Rights Project, PFC

Panelists