Care, an issue that already has public policy

On February 14, at a session of the National Council for Economic and Social Policy, Conpes 4143 was approved. Its purpose is to lay the foundations for the national care policy, which states: "Ensure the guarantee of effective enjoyment of care in dignified conditions , as well as recognize and strengthen the collective, community and practical forms of care specific to rural communities and ethnic peoples, as a pillar for sustaining life."

Care, as an ethical and aesthetic premise, as a fundamental dimension for the guarantee and protection of human and non-human life, allows us to recognize our condition as interdependent beings who care for and, at the same time, require care. We are nothing without the other, philosopher Judith Butler reminds us.

After a lengthy consultation process with communities, experts on the subject, and constant revisions of the document by institutions, especially at the national level, it could be stated that this Conpes document reflects the aspirations and demands for placing the care of life, in its various forms, at the heart of our society.

With this process developed from multiple perspectives and contributions, President Gustavo Petro and Vice President Francia Márquez comply with the provisions of the National Development Plan "Colombia, a world power of life" and Law 2281 of 2023 , which creates the Ministry of Equality and Equity, which establishes in its article 6 the following: "The National Care System is created, through which existing and new services, regulations, policies and technical and institutional actions are articulated, with the aim of responding to the care demands of homes in a co-responsible manner between the Nation, the private sector, civil society, communities, and between women and men in their differences and diversity to promote a new social organization of care and guarantee the human rights of caregivers."

The creation of the National Care System seeks to recognize, redistribute, reduce, represent, and reward paid and unpaid care work through a proposal for shared responsibility between the State, civil society, communities, and the private sector.

The purpose of this system is to recognize that, while we all require care, it is in the way caregiving responsibilities are socially organized that perhaps one of the greatest inequalities occurs, beginning in every Colombian home, as women have historically assumed the greatest burden of caregiving.

In our country, sixteen million people require daily care for their survival, and seven million women—one in four—are the people who care for children, sick people, people with disabilities, or the elderly, and they do so without any compensation.

(Read also: The benefits of taking children to the park and countryside )

To address this situation, the system aims to promote coordination between national government agencies, ministries, and local authorities, so that they commit to developing concrete projects and actions and ensuring that care is provided in dignified conditions.

The system aims to promote the sustainability of life within a multiethnic and pluricultural framework and seeks to make care a fundamental right. It also contributes to the transformation of cultural factors that maintain inequality in the social organization of care and in the sexual division of labor. A key element in giving substance to the system is strengthening state capacity to respond to the demands of those who require care and the rights of those who care for them.

For the development of the policy and the system, $25.655 billion was approved as resources from the various entities involved in its implementation. The largest contributors are the Administrative Department of Social Prosperity, the Ministry of Equality and Equity, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, and the National Apprenticeship System.

While the creation of the National Care System was achieved through the national government, based on a broad participatory process and the approval of Conpes document 4143, its creation was also the result of a long-standing political struggle driven by feminist organizations, ancestral communities, and regulatory provisions. This struggle paved the way for placing the care of life, of all lives, on the public agenda and making its impact visible in the economic, social, political, and cultural spheres.

In Colombia, the effort to prioritize caregiving has been the result of knowledge production and political advocacy by feminist movements and union struggles, decisions by some local governments to contribute to the recognition and redistribution of care work, contributions from the academic world, and a set of regulatory instruments that have, for many years, paved the way toward a society that cares for life.

We can record a first normative antecedent around the care agenda during the second government of Antanas Mockus as mayor of Bogotá , between 2001 and 2003. Through a joint task developed between the then Administrative Department of District Planning (today the Planning Secretariat) and the Administrative Department of Social Welfare (today the Integration Secretariat), a set of projects were carried out to, literally, put on the table the importance of recognizing care as a job that added value to the city's economy and also promote, through pedagogical exercises, cultural transformations in families, so that care work was redistributed among adults.

The second precedent is the enactment of Law 1413 of 2010, the purpose of which was to regulate the inclusion of the care economy in national accounts to measure women's contribution to the country's economic and social development. This law created the National Time Use Survey, which is conducted every three years. Its implementation has made the contribution of unpaid care work, especially undertaken by women, visible in economic terms. The authors of this important law were Cecilia López and Gloria Inés Ramírez.

A third precedent refers to the creation of the Feminist Economy Roundtable in 2011, and the Intersectoral Care Economy Roundtable in 2014. These two groups, based on their own particularities, have pursued a common goal: to contribute to the development of feminist economies, to make visible the contribution of care practices in the country, and to influence the formulation and implementation of policies and interventions to overcome gender inequalities and transform women's lives. In other words, to promote feminist role models that allow women not only to confront the powers of domination that daily burden their lives, but also to make visible how the collective care of life is a practice of resistance to the policies of death and the destruction of our territories.

These two roundtables ensured that the 2014-2018 and 2018-2022 Development Plans included a commitment to laying the foundations for the National Care System. Unfortunately, during those two administrations, those of Juan Manuel Santos and Iván Duque, respectively, no significant progress was made. Today, roundtables focused on the care agenda exist in several regions of the country.

The fourth precedent is found in Decree 902 of May 2017, on the Peace Agreement between the Government and the FARC-EP, which adopts measures to facilitate the implementation of comprehensive rural land reform, specifically the procedure for access to and formalization of land ownership. The decree establishes that priority be given to rural women, peasants, heads of households, and widows in accessing and formalizing land ownership, and recognizes the care economy as a fundamental part of women's role.

The fifth precedent refers to the proposals of some local leaders to develop care systems with the goal of recognizing it as work, deconstructing violent masculinities, and strengthening social policy. Worthy of note is the experience of the city of Bogotá with the creation of the District Care System.

Finally, as noted in Conpes document 4143, there are the struggles of peasant movements and ethnic communities to position a comprehensive concept of care as a result of their ancestral practices of physical and cultural survival.

Today, the National Care System faces particularly challenging political and regulatory challenges. Politically, there are visible tensions between President Petro and Vice President Márquez, and her recent departure from the Ministry of Equality and Equity, the system's flagship entity. This situation calls on those of us who, from different perspectives, have worked for years to make the system a reality to remain vigilant and defend it as a legacy of our feminist struggles.

In the regulatory sphere, it is worth remembering that, starting in 2026, the Ministry will no longer be able to continue fulfilling its mission, as a result of Constitutional Court Ruling 161 of 2024, which declared Law 2188 of 2023 unconstitutional due to procedural defects. The Court also decided to defer enforcement actions until 2026, allowing the law to be resubmitted to Congress. This process has not yet been completed.

As feminist women who seek to protect life in the midst of a world of great turbulence where the politics of death prevail, caring for life, for the planet, should be a commitment of all humanity.

(*) Former representative to the House and former dean of Psychology at the Javeriana University.

(**) Razón Pública is a non-profit think tank that aims to ensure that the best analysts have greater influence on decision-making in Colombia.