Human Rights and the Centrality of Care and Support for Ongoing COVID-19 Impacts in the United States: Submission to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
UN Human Rights Council resolution 54/6 affirmed the integral role of care within a human rights framework, with respect both to the rights of those receiving and providing care. This report offers a contribution to the upcoming UN expert workshop and thematic study specific to the intersections of the COVID-19 pandemic and the human rights of care.
In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic strained an already-struggling care infrastructure, beset with inequalities and precarities. The pandemic exposed just how integral care is to societal and economic well-being. In acute stages of illness, many individuals found few resources to support them or their dependents. Many more went on to develop long COVID which, like many other disabilities, often means that affected individuals must enter into complex and ongoing relationships of receiving care from a constellation of family members, loved ones, or professionals.
The United States passed several measures aiming to ease the burdens of the pandemic. Most notably, the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act provided direct financial assistance to citizens, but its implementation also highlighted the inequities of access to government support, particularly for undocumented immigrants. Further, even though the need remains high to this day, much of the early influx of government assistance expired. Very few systemic issues were redressed during this flurry of attention.
Particularly as Americans age, individuals increasingly reside in long-term care facilities. The pandemic had a disproportionate toll in these settings. With many facilities underfunded, understaffed, and isolated, a communicable disease like COVID-19 was able to wreak havoc both on residents and staffers. For these groups, the pandemic caused significant mental, physical, and emotional suffering.
COVID-19 also exposed the disproportionate burdens of care forced upon racial minorities, especially Black Americans, poor and working-class Americans, those with disabilities, immigrants, and women. While many white and wealthier Americans were able to work safely from home and arrange for private child- or eldercare, other multiply-marginalized Americans faced significantly higher rates of acute infection and death, disease exposure on the job, unemployment, inadequate healthcare, a dearth of childcare options, and illness or loss of primary caregivers–all of which complicated or made impossible the tasks of care.
Our report closes with suggestions derived from our research in the United States. We conclude that care-giving and care-receiving are practices deserving of recognition under a human rights framework. We advocate for: (1) development of a long-term and wide-reaching system of support for caregivers; (2) dedicating significant resources to research on acute and long COVID; (3) establishing Caregiver Respite policies; and (4) establishing an international standard for informal caregiver fund provisions.
Particularly as climate change threatens to amplify and introduce new pandemic risks, we must heed the lessons of COVID-19 and strengthen our care networks worldwide.
