On August 7, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued Advisory Opinion No. 31 concerning the content and scope of the right to care and its interrelation with other human rights. The opinion was rendered in response to a request submitted by the Republic of Argentina in January 2023.
The Court, as the adjudicatory body of the Inter-American Human Rights System, is composed of seven independent judges, elected in their personal capacity by the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS). At the time of issuing this opinion, the Court was presided over by Judge Nancy Hernández López of Costa Rica.
Nature and Relevance of Advisory Opinions
Advisory Opinions (AOs) are provided for under Article 64 of the American Convention on Human Rights and regulated by Articles 70 to 75 of the Court’s Rules of Procedure. This mechanism allows OAS Member States and organs to request the Court’s interpretation of provisions contained in human rights treaties of the Inter-American system.
Although not legally binding per se, the Court’s advisory opinions carry substantial conceptual and jurisprudential weight, as they clarify the scope and interpretation of specific human rights. Consequently, States frequently turn to this mechanism to better understand their obligations under the American Convention.
Furthermore, in issuing its AOs, the Court routinely incorporates a wide array of perspectives, including academic, professional, and civil society contributions. This pluralistic approach significantly enriches the legal reasoning underpinning its findings.
Notably, Advisory Opinion No. 31 became the second most participatory consultative process in the Court’s history, with 129 written observations submitted. (The most participatory to date was AO No. 32 on the climate emergency, published in July 2025.)
In addition to their doctrinal relevance, advisory opinions allow the Court to develop theoretical and interpretative frameworks without the limitations imposed by specific contentious cases, thereby facilitating the evolution of regional human rights jurisprudence.
AO No. 31 marks the first instance in which an international tribunal has been formally requested to address, and has ruled on, the right to care as a human right and its interaction with other fundamental rights.
The Argentine Request
The request submitted by the Argentine State on January 20, 2023, sought the Court’s determination on whether care constitutes an autonomous human right and, if so, what obligations derive therefrom for States under international law.
In support of its request, Argentina raised several interrelated issues, including the rights to provide care, to receive care, and to self-care; equality and non-discrimination in caregiving; the connection between care and the right to life; and the relationship between care and other economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights. It further examined the normative duties of the State in this context.
The Argentine submission noted that, despite the emergence of the right to care in international discourse, there remains a lack of comprehensive legal treatment and, consequently, an absence of a clear and uniform definition of its normative content and scope within international law.
Moreover, it emphasized the need to delineate general and specific State obligations, minimum essential content, budgetary allocations necessary for its realization, and adequate compliance indicators.
Argentina articulated a broad set of legal questions, ranging from whether care may be considered an autonomous human right to the recognition of gender dimensions, labor rights of caregivers, and related rights under the Protocol of San Salvador.
Advisory Opinion No. 31: Core Findings
In response to Argentina’s request, the Court concluded—on the basis of a systematic, evolutionary, and pro persona interpretation of various provisions of the American Convention—that there exists an autonomous right to care within the Inter-American human rights framework.
The final substantive paragraph of the opinion unanimously declares:
“The right to care constitutes an autonomous right derived from the American Convention on Human Rights, the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, and the Charter of the Organization of American States, as developed in paragraphs 39 to 114 and 132 of the present Opinion.”
The Court affirmed that care constitutes a basic, universal, and inescapable human need, upon which the continuity of life itself and the functioning of social relations critically depend.
The opinion emphasizes that recognizing the right to care implies acknowledging its normative and functional autonomy, as it safeguards a specific set of material and relational conditions essential to human dignity and well-being. The absence or neglect of these conditions may hinder the effective realization of multiple interdependent human rights (paras. 114–115).
The Court articulated three core dimensions of this right:
- The right to receive care: All individuals with any level of dependency are entitled to adequate, quality care that ensures a life of dignity (para. 116).
- The right to provide care: Individuals have the right to provide care, whether paid or unpaid, under conditions that respect their dignity and human rights, including protection against discrimination and guarantees of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and cultural well-being (para. 117).
- The right to self-care: Both caregivers and recipients have the right to attend to their own physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and cultural needs. This includes access to the time, space, and resources necessary to safeguard their well-being and autonomy (para. 118).
Gender and Ethnic Stereotyping
The Court acknowledged the impact of entrenched gender stereotypes and sociocultural norms that have led to the disproportionate burden of unpaid care work on women, who perform such tasks at three times the rate of men.
It further recognized that Indigenous and Afro-descendant women face heightened vulnerability in the context of the right to care. The Court urged States to adopt special protective measures in light of the overrepresentation of these women in informal and domestic labor, which reflects systemic and structural discrimination (para. 117).
This inequitable distribution of caregiving duties poses significant barriers to the realization of rights such as work, education, and social security for women, girls, and adolescents.
State Obligations Under the Convention
The Court affirmed that pursuant to Articles 1.1 and 2 of the American Convention and the substantive content of the right to care, States are obligated to:
- Refrain from acts that infringe upon the right to care;
- Organize the state apparatus in a manner that ensures the legal and institutional conditions necessary for the free and full exercise of this right;
- Adopt or repeal domestic legal norms required to give full effect to the right to care, including the recognition of every individual’s right to provide and receive care.
The Court held that care work constitutes work in the legal and economic sense: it comprises voluntarily undertaken service activities of social and economic value, performed with a degree of permanence and intensity (paras. 208–218).
Accordingly, States must adopt effective measures to eradicate all forms of forced and child labor and eliminate discrimination against unpaid caregivers.
In addition, the Court called upon States to progressively guarantee fundamental labor protections to unpaid caregivers, including limits on daily working hours, minimum periods of rest, and access to comprehensive social security systems to cover health and old-age contingencies (paras. 227–231).
It further stressed that the right to social security must be progressively realized for all, through systems grounded in the principles of universality, solidarity, social inclusion, and progressivity, incorporating both contributory and non-contributory components (paras. 241–249).
In essence, the Court defined the autonomous right to care as the right of every person to have the time, space, and resources necessary to provide, receive, or seek conditions that ensure their own or others’ holistic well-being, enabling the free development of their life plans in accordance with their capacities and life stage.
Foundational Principles of the Right to Care
Beyond its legal foundations, the Court situated the right to care within the framework of solidarity, social and familial co-responsibility, equality, and non-discrimination.
It held that this right is inherently rooted in the principle of social and familial co-responsibility, the principle of solidarity, and the principle of equality and non-discrimination.
The right to care is intimately connected to the principle of solidarity, understood as the recognition of common humanity, mutual interdependence, and the collective duty to cooperate in the realization of rights and pursuit of shared goals.
As such, the social valorization of care is a legal obligation arising from this principle, given that care represents an intrinsically valuable human activity essential to interpersonal bonds and social cohesion (para. 120).
Care responsibilities, the Court emphasized, are shared among individuals and the social structures in which they are embedded: family, community, civil society, the private sector, and the State.
This principle entails solidary and subsidiary responsibility among these social actors to ensure the organization and sustainability of everyday life—a concept understood as a care network, whose scope must be shaped by the needs of individuals and the functions of each social institution.
Specifically, the principle of familial co-responsibility requires an equitable and just distribution of unpaid caregiving tasks within the home, mandating shared caregiving responsibilities between men and women (para. 119).