Petra Ezzeddine, Charles University

Maroš Matiaško, Charles University

The crisis of care and politically induced indifference concerning care have become well-described phenomena (Dowling, 2021). It echoes more profound challenges in how care is valued, organized, and provided within capitalistic societies, which are subject to many pressures from different directions and hamper processes of social reproduction (Fraser, 2016). The crisis is taking place in a space that is not normatively void but filled with a network of obligations stemming from human rights norms. Indeed, care recipients, informal carers, and care workers have been approaching national and international human rights bodies, and care has become a subject of legal interpretation. Yet, human rights norms do not recognize the concept of care, and the meaning of care in this arena is an open question.

In our interdisciplinary panel, we would like to look at the processes of vernacularization of human rights (Merry, 2006) related to all forms of care and the creation of the meaning of care against the background of human rights litigation and legal initiatives. We would like to search with our panel participants for answers to the following questions:

a.) What unique jurisprudence and argumentative strategies have emerged concerning care before the national and international courts and quasi-judicial mechanisms in the last decade?

b.) How do translating the discourses and practices from the arena of human rights and legal institutions influence care practices, legal norms, and social policies in the domain of care?

c.) How human rights approach is affecting the political mobilization and advocacy for human rights related to care?

d.) How are approached and interpreted rights of concrete groups, such as care recipients with very high-level needs, rights of informal carers or cross-border care workers?

e.) How the right to care is (not) communicating with the rights of care workers?