Dear Excellencies,

Dear Distinguished Speakers and Guests,

Dear Friends,

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It’s an honor to be here. I want to thank the United Nations Youth Office for organizing and facilitating the discussion and the Beyond Lab at UN Geneva, which helped me access this important stage and contribute to this conversation. Last spring, I participated in an initiative led by the Beyond Lab, the UNCTAD, and Rethinking Economics, inviting youth voices to explore how we can reframe progress beyond traditional metrics like GDP, and that’s what I want to discuss with you today.

The 2030 Agenda and its SDGs were created to address the limitations of focusing solely on economic growth. GDP doesn’t capture many key aspects of well-being; it was also not designed to measure that. We, the younger generation, have a lot to say about how we measure development today, and I want to highlight a critical area often overlooked: the care economy.

I recently watched a video about the workers who keepNew York City running. Of course, we had bagel makers, pizza chefs, environmental managers, deli workers, and even the Rockefeller Christmas Tree Transporters! All these key players. But not a single mention of caregivers. And that’s the reality: we often overlook the vital role of care in our daily lives. The economy simply wouldn’t function without caregivers, yet their work remains invisible. There is not a single person in the world who is not touched by care. We all fall into one of these categories: we need care, we will need care, we are caregivers, or we will be caregivers. We might be more than one at the same time.

Care is more than just childcare. It includes unpaid and paid labor, from looking after children and elders to housecleaning and meal preparation. Globally, women bear the brunt of this work, spending an average of 4.5 hours a day on unpaid care, compared to men’s 2.5 hours. Caregivers are also disproportionately from lower-income households, facing unique challenges, especially in rural areas[1].

Feminist scholars argue that women’s economic vulnerability is tied to their unpaid care burdens. Economist Diane Elson’s "three Rs"—Recognize, Reduce, and Redistribute unpaid care work, complemented by Professor Jennifer Olmsted, two more Rs: Reinforcement and Reward. —are a call to action. We must acknowledge that care is foundational to social sustainability, making the rest of society possible.

The rights of caregivers and care recipients are at stake. Reducing a woman’s unpaid care work can promote gender equality, but without replacing that care, children’s well-being can suffer. That is why care needs to be subsidized to make it accessible while assuring that the important work care providers do to ensure social sustainability is fully rewarded. Governments need to implement adequate care policies, and the private sector should support this through flexible work arrangements. The UN plays avital role in fostering these commitments, but it’s up to us, the younger generation, to push this agenda forward.

I was fortunate to be raised by two hard-working individuals, my mum and my dad. However, I always knew they weren't alone in raising me—it took a community. I live in NYC now, and I am in charge of taking care of only myself… and maybe some plants, which for now are surviving, and still, there are some weeks in which I can't manage to accomplish all that I have to do.

The point is that our story is incomplete when care is overlooked; we cannot explain how we and our communities develop without acknowledging the most essential work of all: care. Rethinking the care economy, truly valuing care work, and investing in quality paid care as part of essential public services and social protection systems are crucial.

Back in 2012, I was in this very building as a nervous sixteen-year-old attending a UN Model organized by Columbia University. I barely spoke during that event, but it taught me the power of dreams and taking chances when life presents them to you, even if you are scared. But beyond that, it showed me the importance of people trusting the young generations' voices; even if we might seem lost and insecure the first time and make mistakes, we can turn projects and ideas into real-life platforms because we have passion and we know how hard is to get to these spaces.

We must rethink the care economy, truly value care work, invest in it as a public good and question the cost of not caring.

Thank you.

[1] Family Caregiver Alliance, Stitch Crew data

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