Reconceptualising socioeconomic rights: a case for care ethics

As the COVID-19 pandemic has unveiled, care is ubiquitous, critical for all aspects of daily life. However, equally visible is the deficit in care both within states and on the international level. Care, as both a practice and value, has advanced far beyond its conception within feminist theory and has since been employed in a range of disciplines within the social sciences and beyond. Of particular note is its ability to deepen understandings of power and contest inequalities through the exploration of relationalities. Nevertheless, the lens of care has yet to be sufficiently explored in the context of international human rights law. Meanwhile, concerns regarding human rights’ susceptibility to appropriation by neoliberal forces are growing in volume and severity. Drawing on the work of Joan Tronto, this article suggests an appreciation of rights as interconnected and interdependent as the key to creating communities of care which level socioeconomic disparities on the international level. Chiefly, it proposes a rights-based approach informed by Tronto’s political theory of care as a means of transforming socioeconomic rights into the counter-hegemonic tool required to more effectively challenge neoliberalism.