Public policies to strengthen Paraguay’s National Care System

Paraguay hosted the international seminar “Towards a National Care System“, a space for dialogue, reflection, and exchange between different political and social actors from Paraguay, Latin America and Europe on the importance of promoting a National Care System as a strategic cross-cutting axis of the Social Protection System.

The event was organised by the Ministry of Women, with the support of the EUROsociAL+ Programme and the Support for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda in Paraguay programme financed by the European Union and led by FIIAPP. Among the participants in this exchange were the Minister and Deputy Ministers of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs of Paraguay, the EU ambassador in the country, the Deputy Minister of Social Development of Costa Rica, and the Undersecretary for Care and Equality Policies of the District Secretariat for Women of Bogotá.

This seminar marks the beginning of a cycle of dialogues between public administrations on policies to advance SDG 5, equality and empowerment of women and girls. During the event, the Deputy Minister for Equality and Non-Discrimination, Lilian Fouz, indicated that the inequitable distribution of care tasks and the lack of policies are among the obstacles to overcome for women to achieve real equality, adding that “the Ministry of Women is committed to carrying out a process of analysis and construction of public care policies that balance these relationships in the home, in public and private spaces”.

The executive director of the technical unit of the Social Cabinet of Paraguay, Carmen Ubaldi, has focused on the importance of care policies for the country’s social protection system since, according to her statements, “it is a transversal element in its strengthening because it focuses on guaranteeing the rights of people to be cared for and generates the conditions that strengthen the participation of women in the labour market, which in the long term translates into a society with more inclusive and egalitarian economic growth”.

On the other hand, Javier García de Viedma, European Union Ambassador to Paraguay, emphasised the EU’s participation in this type of initiative in key areas for social cohesion, given that “making international best practices available helps to improve public policies and strengthen institutional capacities”. Regarding public investment, she stressed that in the area of care, as well as responding to a social need, it would help to create new sources of employment which, in addition, many suitably trained women could take advantage of.

The idea of promoting national care policies and their regulatory frameworks is based on the idea that care for dependent persons should become an integral, structural and stable component of social welfare systems, as can be seen in existing experiences, such as that of Costa Rica.

At the close of the event, during the intervention of the Minister for Women, Celina Lezcano, she expressed her gratitude for the involvement of national and international institutions and organisations in this project to support Paraguay in addressing human welfare from the perspective of care policies. “We have to continue adding up to be able to fulfil the commitments assumed by the Paraguayan State in terms of equal opportunities between men and women”.