On June 12, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) issued Advisory Opinion OC-31/25 at the request of the Argentine State. During the consultation phase, WIEGO submitted written observations on the right to care and working in informal employment, acting as an amicus curiae — a person or institution that provides expert information to assist the court. The Advisory Opinion not only recognizes the right to care as an autonomous human right, but, for the first time on record, it explicitly states that the right to work applies equally to all workers, regardless of whether they are in formal or informal employment.
The Advisory Opinion marks a major legal milestone for the entire region: from now on, it is beyond dispute that workers in informal employment hold the same rights as anyone else. States must therefore introduce measures to protect, respect, and guarantee not only formal work but also the multiple types of informal work, including domestic work, care work, waste picking, street vending, and home-based work. This interpretive standard will now guide future decisions of national and international human rights courts and entities.
What the Right to Care Means and Who It Covers
Advisory Opinion OC-31/25 originated from a question by Argentina: What are the duties of states on the right to care?
In reply, the IACtHR for the first time recognized care as an autonomous human right that “includes the right of every person to have the time, space, and resources necessary to provide, receive or secure conditions that ensure their comprehensive well-being and allow them to develop their life plan freely, in accordance with their capabilities and stage of life.”
The court noted that while care may already be protected under various rights enshrined in the American Convention on Human Rights, this protection is insufficient because it risks undermining individuals’ dignity and does not provide adequate guarantees for care workers. With care now recognized by the court as an autonomous right, states must implement measures — including legislative actions — to ensure its effectiveness across three dimensions: the right to receive care, the right to provide care, and the right to self-care.
The Advisory Opinion also confirms that the right to work must protect care activities, thereby granting care workers labour protections. In practice, this means that states must protect caregivers comprehensively, ensuring adequate time, health protection, rest, and decent working conditions, as well as formally recognizing the economic and social value of the work they perform.
Although the IACtHR does not require the establishment of national care systems, it recommends them as a relevant means to realize the right to care, thereby encouraging shared responsibilities among families, communities, businesses, and governments.
Beyond its benefits for people who provide care, the Advisory Opinion signals an important normative step towards the legal protection of all informal work, broadening recognition of the right to work and social security for millions of people.
Who Does Care Work in the Americas
The IACtHR examined who undertakes care work in the Americas and concluded that Indigenous and Afro-descendant women are overrepresented in both informal and domestic work; it also found that they are often migrants. Many of these women work in poor conditions, earn low wages, and face barriers to accessing rights in the countries where they live.
The Advisory Opinion situates these patterns within the concept of “global care chains”: women who migrate to provide care for other families, usually delegating their own unpaid care responsibilities to women in their households back home. These dynamics increase the burden of care work, create vulnerabilities for both the women who migrate and those who stay in their communities, and sustain discriminatory practices rooted in gender, ethnicity, economic status, and place of origin.
The Impact of Recognizing Care as Work: A Landmark Expansion of Rights for Workers in Informal Employment
One of the key advances is the court’s assertion that care work — whether paid or unpaid — constitutes work. In doing so, the IACtHR breaks with the long-standing assumption that the right to work only protects formal or salaried employment relationships. The court indeed underscores that work is not limited to tasks carried out within a paid employment relationship. While, in principle, this statement refers to unpaid care workers, it also benefits self-employed or non-salaried workers, who are inadequately protected by labour regulations and related policies.
The IACtHR supports its reasoning by citing ILO’s Recommendation 204 on the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy. WIEGO has promoted R204 globally because it remains the only international standard that explicitly outlines the conditions needed to ensure decent work for people in informal employment. The court draws on this standard to reaffirm that such guarantees must be extended to individuals whose work is not formally recognized or regulated, which is the case of unpaid care workers.
Recognizing Care as Part of Labour Rights Helps Dismantle Structural Injustice
The IACtHR also highlights individuals with family caregiving responsibilities — primarily women — who must juggle caregiving with formal or informal employment. The court asserts that states must ensure that caregiving duties do not hold back the exercise of the right to work.
This is crucial in the informal economy, where women often reduce their working hours or withdraw from union or organizing activities because their lives revolve around caring for children, older adults, or people with illnesses. Without public care services or support networks, women shoulder a collective responsibility unaided and are pushed into a precarious situation.
The court ties this reality to the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining, warning that without adequate time and conditions to organize, women in informal employment are also effectively barred from advocating for their rights and demanding better working conditions.
Health and Social Security as Pillars of the Right to Care
The Advisory Opinion also considers the connection between care work and health and social security. It acknowledges that individuals engaged in care tasks — especially in informal employment — face physical and mental health risks, such as long working hours, exposure to occupational diseases, and insufficient rest.
The IACtHR therefore directs states to implement measures that fully protect caregivers’ well-being, ranging from phased access to social security systems to the introduction of comprehensive care systems with adequate time, space, and resources.
The court further calls for the strengthening of non-contributory social security schemes, noting that most care workers are women in informal or unpaid employment, and thus financially unable to make regular social security contributions.
Concrete Measures to Guarantee Care and Domestic Workers the Right to Social Security
In examining the social security design, the IACtHR urges states to account for the time women dedicate to child care and for the fact that women undertake more unpaid care work than men — factors that may prevent them from contributing to social security on an equal footing. The court thus emphasizes the importance of a minimum set of non-contributory benefits that would cover all workers in informal employment.
The court also suggests practical mechanisms — such as multiple-employer affiliation, which could help secure domestic workers’ right to social security — as well as options for partial or occasional contributions for workers in informal employment more broadly.
A Precedent that Transforms the Future
At WIEGO, we celebrate this Advisory Opinion as progress not only for the right to care but also for the rights to work and to social security, and for their connection to the freedoms of assembly and association. By issuing this opinion, the court validates decades of struggle led by domestic workers, care workers, waste pickers, and street vendors in informal employment, and it strengthens the legal foundation of our collective efforts towards social and economic justice.