Transforming Lives with Irish Aid: Women’s Rights Programme
Across the world, women and girls’ rights are affected the most by poverty. From the moment they are born, girls face inequalities and injustice in almost every aspect of their lives. Supporting women and girls as they claim their rights, is the most effective way for communities to lead themselves out of poverty. That is why we put women’s human rights at the heart of all we do.
Women’s Rights Programme
Irish Aid, the government’s programme for overseas development, as funded by the Irish taxpayer, funds ActionAid Ireland’s flagship Women’s Rights Programme. We prioritise working with the furthest behind first. And so, we work with the most marginalised women in communities in Ethiopia, Kenya and Nepal. The aim is to prevent violence against women and girls and to improve their economic wellbeing, by working with women, girls, boys, men and wider community.
What’s the programme trying to achieve?
- Prevent and reduce violence against women and girls
- Increase safety of women and girls
- Improve their economic well-being and access to public services
- Minimise the impact of climate change on women and girls
- Support women’s organisations and activism
- Demand accountability for women’s rights
Global Citizenship Education
In Ireland, Irish Aid also supports ActionAid’s work on global citizenship education where we engage with the public, supporters, students and teachers to deepen their understanding of international development and gender justice. We are members of the Irish Development Education Association and are signed up to their code of conduct for Global Citizenship Education to ensure our resources, formal, non-formal and informal, meet the best possible standards. The annual ActionTalks Speech Writing Competition is part of this programme of work.
Gender Transformative Programming – A Learning Review
In December 2023 we published a learning review of our Women’s Rights Programme II. Phase II of the programme ran from 2017-2022 and the current phase runs until 2027. Over six years, ActionAid Ireland supported 7,131 women and girls to experience greater safety and empowerment. We engaged 1,930 men and boys as allies to reduce violence and discrimination. And we supported 29 organisations to champion women’s rights. The paper highlighted the key results and learnings from the programme. Read the full paper here.
In phase III of our Women’s Rights Programme, ActionAid will strengthen our survivor-centred approach to ensure key elements are considered in every programme intervention. This includes both hard and soft skills including deconstruction of biases and preconceptions about survivors, clear communication and giving survivors information they need to make informed choices, respecting confidentiality, and investing time and funds in resources and referrals so that they are available to survivors. This guidance will be rooted in an intersectional feminist approach to regularly dissect the structural causes and power imbalances at the root of gender inequalities and abuses. Finally, ActionAid Ireland is also committed to better integrating our programming work with our priorities around gender justice, economic justice and climate justice.
Women’s Rights Programme: Case study
Through the programme, Chief Constance, the only female chief from Taita Taveta county Kenya, worked with local women to identify the issues they faced. She discovered that local women were unaware of their rights and so were not reporting cases of gender-based violence. She also identified a lack of services for women who experienced violence.
Together with Chief Constance we organised online forums to support local women to better understand their rights and enabled them to raise awareness of the issue within their own communities. As a result, there was an increase in women reporting gender-based violence and the county government made additional resources available for services.
ActionAid Kenya, funded by Irish Aid and in partnership with ActionAid Ireland, are supporting a powerful women’s network aimed at eradicating Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and gender-based violence.
ActionAid Ireland Head of Programmes, Grainne Kilcullen, writes about a recent visit to Kenya.
