Speakers Lay Out How Investments in Caregiving, Support Systems Help End Poverty, Safeguard Dignity, during Panel Discussion of Social Development Commission

Speakers Lay Out How Investments in Caregiving, Support Systems Help End Poverty, Safeguard Dignity, during Panel Discussion of Social Development Commission

The Commission for Social Development continued its sixty-fourth session today with a panel discussion on how resilient care and support systems can help eradicate poverty and safeguard dignity.

The Commission's annual session opened on 2 February and will run through 10 February at UN Headquarters in New York. Created in 1946, the Commission provides a forum in which Member States assess progress and gaps in poverty eradication, social inclusion, employment and social protection.

Delegations are meeting to discuss implementing commitments made during the two World Summits for Social Development held to date - the first in Copenhagen in 1995 and the second in Doha 30 years later. These are contained in, respectively, the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action and the Doha Political Declaration.

Titled "Eradicating poverty and ensuring dignity through resilient care and support systems", today's panel discussion was moderated by José Antonio Ocampo, Co-Director of the Economic and Political Development Concentration at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University.

Li Xin, Director General of the International Poverty Reduction Center in China, as the first panellist, said that China has treated poverty reduction as a core governance priority, noting that "since the reform and opening up", the country has lifted over 800 million people out of poverty. After an intensified push beginning in 2012, it eradicated absolute poverty by the end of 2020 and met a key 2030 Agenda goal 10 years ahead of schedule. To illustrate political commitment, she recalled President Xi Jinping visiting a minority community in Hunan, where an elderly woman asked: "Who are you?" To that, he replied: "I'm your public servant… I'm here to see what I can do for you?"

China is working to identify every poor household, build a national database, diagnose root causes, as well as dispatching teams to 128,000 poor villages to live and work locally until villages escape poverty. "Poverty alleviation through employment plays a very important role," she said, warning that without steady work millions of people will fall back to poverty.

Latin America: Integrating Care Systems into Social Protection, Development Landscape

Shelly Ann Edwards, Director of Social Protection and Gender at the Planning Institute of Jamaica, underlined the importance of comprehensive care policies and systems due to demographic trends across the Latin America and Caribbean region, where such systems are "becoming integral to social protection and development". This is, in part, because of an increase in both the working-age and elderly populations. She reported that, in Jamaica, the concept of care is "built into our social-protection and poverty-reduction landscape"; however, there is currently no comprehensive care policy.

She therefore underlined the need for further research into unpaid care work, as well as the importance of defining and measuring the "care economy" both to better appreciate its significance to gross domestic product (GDP) and to realize its potential as an economic driver. Jamaica's Government is working to enact strategies that "will help to provide social protection for those who are being cared for, as well as those who provide the care".

Africa: Grassroots Women on Caregiving Frontlines

Violet Shivutse, Founder and Director of Shibuye Community Health Workers, traced the "genesis" of her caregiving to the increased burden of care during the peak of HIV/AIDS, which really hit Africa. Illness spread and an increased number of orphans emerged, she recalled. "We found ourselves as grassroots women taking the burden of care really seriously, and we had to organize in groups," she described. In places with very weak social protection, caregivers remain the only solution to meet needs, organize communities, and mobilize local leaders during times of crisis.

Grassroots women are frontliners in COVID, climate-related disasters, floods, and food insecurity, she said. However, they lack direct support for innovations like the cooperatives and initiatives they run. Grassroots women are not helpless, she stressed, calling for meaningful civic space. The spaces for grassroots caregivers to engage with Governments must expand so they can demonstrate the leadership of grassroots women as caregivers and "the transformation that we are making in communities every time", she concluded.

Well-designed Care, Support Systems Benefit Everyone

"Everyone, at some point in their lives, has need of care," observed Lauren Whitehead, Social Protection and Gender Lead at the Global Technical Team on Care and Family Friendly Policies of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). It is important to recognize that this issue is "collectively shared across the human population", she said, adding that there is also a need to distinguish between care and support to understand differing beneficiaries and services.

Well-designed care and support systems "can actually benefit everyone", she added. Women and girls can gain greater participation in the labour market, men and boys can engage as caregivers in their homes and communities, persons with disabilities can participate on par with others and older persons can live independent, dignified lives. On how family relates to the design of social-protection policies, she urged those present to think of the provision of such protection in terms of "concentric circles". The Government represents the biggest circle, the next communities, inside that households and families and, finally, the individual.

Care Gap at Heart of Multidimensional Poverty Trap

Margrit Saroufim Youssef, Deputy Minister of Social Solidarity of Egypt, said that care and support systems are "the invisible engine of our global economy". At the heart of today's multidimensional poverty trap lies a care gap, as millions - primarily women - are pushed out of formal work by unpaid care for children, older persons, or family members with disabilities. Care must therefore be treated not as a private burden but as a public good and a cornerstone of resilient development.

"Egypt's experience showed that comprehensive care and support systems are central tools for poverty eradication and decent work," she said. A critical lesson learned from Egypt's experience is that care systems must reach people where poverty is most rooted, particularly in rural areas. The "Decent Life" initiative, which has reached 58 million people, helps turn beneficiaries into active economic actors via localized jobs, finance and training, green industries, and digital platforms.

Care, Support Services, Not Just Cash, Key to Protecting Dignity, Preventing Isolation

Hande Şahin, Family and Social Services Specialist in Türkiye's Ministry of Family and Social Services, emphasized that poverty is "not only about money"; rather, it also relates to time, care responsibilities and access to services. Therefore, while cash assistance is important, it works best when combined with care and support services. To illustrate, she offered the example of an older person who, while receiving financial aid, would experience a decrease in independence without support for daily needs.

"Cash helps with expenses, but it does not always protect dignity or prevent isolation," she observed. This, she stressed, is why integration matters: "Income support stabilizes households, while care services enable participation." This integration works through systems - not individual projects - and she said that the goal is one coordinated system that identifies care needs early and responds across the life course - "instead of reacting only when problems become severe".

Investing in Care, among "Most Powerful and Most Underestimated" Forces in Society, Could Create 300 Million Jobs by 2035

Farah Arabe, Make Mothers Matter, said that care is among the "most powerful and most underestimated" forces in society. Care is a foundational public good and yet today's care deficit is systemic. Unpaid care and domestic work done overwhelmingly by women is valued at between 10 and 39 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) at minimum wage, sometimes exceeding manufacturing, commerce or transportation, yet it remains invisible in national accounts. Investing in care, especially childcare, could by 2035 generate up to 300 million jobs, lift employment by six percentage points, and cut the gender employment gap by seven points. "Globally, women perform on average, two to two and a half times more unpaid care and domestic work than men," she said. These norms are reproduced across generations, and unless they are interrupted will continue to reinforce inequality in households, workplaces and public life alike.

Make Mothers Matter found more than 67 per cent of mothers feel "mentally overloaded", and half report anxiety, depression, or burnout. The prescription is a shift from fragmented, short-term interventions to comprehensive, coordinated care systems. "Care is not a side policy," she said, adding: "It is the system that makes development possible".

María-Isabel Cobos, Chief of the Social and Gender Statistics Section in the Statistics Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, underscored the importance of time-use data to understanding populations' living conditions and well-being. "Time is a universal constant, and every person has 24 hours in a day," she observed, pointing out that time-use data offers a clear view of well-being beyond economic activity; can be used to assess policy changes over time; and is key to monitoring progress towards many of the Sustainable Development Goals.

She also spotlighted its ability to measure unpaid domestic care work, which is "an essential, but often invisible, contribution" made by people - mostly women - to society that is not captured in conventional economic measures such as GDP. If such work is measured in economic terms, she added, "the results are quite eye-opening". In Kenya, for example, unpaid care work as a percentage of GDP is only second to agriculture. In Mexico, it is second to none, and "that is the case in many other countries with different levels of economic development", she said.

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* The 5^th Meeting was not covered.

Complete Live Blog coverage of today's meeting can be found here.