International Day of Care and Support
Next: October 29, 2027
For everyone who looks after someone.
The story
Where it comes from
The UN General Assembly proclaimed 29 October the International Day of Care and Support in July 2023, in resolution 77/317. Trade unions had already held a global day of action for care on that date since 2019. The day asks the world to recognise and value care, paid or unpaid: the nurses, care workers and domestic workers who do it as a job, and the parents, children and neighbours who do it at home, mostly without pay and mostly women.
How it's celebrated
UN Women, the International Labour Organization and the UN human rights office mark the day with events in Geneva and New York, and governments use it to talk about childcare, care for older people and fair pay for care workers. For everyone else, it is a day to thank a carer: the nurse, the helper at home, the grandparent on the school run, or the friend who brought soup.
Did you know
- The ILO estimates that 16.4 billion hours of unpaid care work are done every day, equal to two billion people working eight hours without pay.
- In Asia and the Pacific, women spend 4.1 times as much time on unpaid care work as men, according to the ILO.
- The UN counts a global care workforce of 249 million women and 132 million men.
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