Learnings from our Women’s Rights Programme

December 8, 2023

We’re delighted to present our learnings from our Women’s Rights Programme 2017 to 2022.

ActionAid Ireland’s Women’s Rights Programme, funded by Irish Aid, aims to increase the safety and security of women and girls and improve their economic wellbeing in Ethiopia, Kenya and Nepal. 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.

Read some of our key successes below or download the full learning paper here:

Key successes

Violence is reducing

Violence reduced against women and community elders in all three countries. There were reported reductions in different forms of violence against women (e.g. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), child marriage, domestic violence, sexual harassment in public places). An average of 33% of women and girls reported feeling safer. In Ethiopia, 21 women watch groups (community-based networks) managed 333 cases of GBV (reporting, referral, and access to justice). In Kenya, the Women’s Rights Network managed 243 cases of incest, rape, child sexual abuse, sodomy, domestic violence, child marriage; 72 cases of FGM. And in Nepal, 301 survivors of domestic violence, rape, early child marriage, abuse, polygamy, harassment successfully obtained legal justice from the district to supreme court level.

Livelihoods are improving

Marginalised women are taking part in income generating activities — kitchen gardens, poultry rearing and goat rearing. With support from the programme, women in Ethiopia formed 10 new savings and credit cooperatives benefitting 2,855 women. Women in Kenya are borrowing up to KSH 200,000 for new businesses. In Nepal 45 women formally registered new businesses and 176 have shifted from traditional farming to commercial agroecology.

Reaching the furthest behind women and girls

This included Hard-to Reach women and girls who were geographically isolated, with little access to public services or political representation, and those from marginalised ethnic groups. As part of the programme we worked to build their confidence and agency to claim their rights. This reach was evident in the increase of gender-based violence cases being reported. The strengthening of women’s leadership. And the establishment of different community women’s groups.

Women are advocating for issues that are important to them

Women are advocating for issues that are important to them and their communities in all three countries. In Ethiopia, ActionAid and the Consortium of Ethiopian Human Rights Organisation successfully advocated for reform in court practices to protect and safeguard child survivors. In Kenya, ActionAid and the Women’s Rights Network successfully advocated for two county gender policies, which include a strong focus on GBV. And in Nepal, ActionAid and the National Women’s Forum have advocated for improved access to justice for survivors across the country resulting in justice for 56 survivors and their families, and punishment of 29 perpetrators of heinous crimes such as murder and rape.

Power brokers are more supportive of women’s and girls’ rights

Men and boys at household, community and district level, religious leaders, service providers are more supportive of women’s and girls’ rights. These allies are sustaining changes. For example, religious leaders challenging are child marriage. Men no longer supporting practice of isolating women and girls during menstruation. Transport providers are monitoring and deterring violence). In Ethiopia, there was a 50% increase in the number of men and boys (435) supporting women and girls in relieving the unfair burden of unpaid care work. In Kenya, over 300 men now support an end to FGM and over 30 religious leaders have publicly condemned the practice. And in Nepal, 305 men and 137 adolescent boys have begun sharing and dividing household work, ending controlling behaviour, reducing alcohol consumption, and engaging women in decision making while 53 religious leaders spoke publicly against child marriage.

How we will use these learnings

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.

Protestors at COP 28 in Dubai. Photo: Konrad Skotnicki.

Belfast Climate Change March, 2019. Photo: Trócaire.

The Profit Driving the Crisis

Despite their overwhelming contribution to global emissions, fossil fuel companies continue to attract significant financial backing—driven by their enduring profitability. This is starkly illustrated by the case of ExxonMobil, the top fossil fuel investment held by asset managers based in Ireland. In 2023, ExxonMobil reported €33.63 billion ($36 billion) in profit. That is almost twice the GDP of Botswana (€18.1 billion) and nearly three times Namibia’s GDP (€11.5 billion).

Ireland plays a hugely disproportionate role in facilitating investments into fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil. In 2023, the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland generated an estimated 72.5 million tons of CO2e. This is more than the CO2e emissions for the entire country of Ireland—and more than ten times that generated by Sierra Leone.

The Global Human Impact

The climate crisis is here, now, and it is causing disproportionate harm in the Global South. In Bangladesh, rising sea levels and increasingly severe cyclones are displacing coastal communities, with projections indicating that 17% of the entire country could be underwater by 2050. The legally binding Paris Agreement on climate change explicitly acknowledges the importance of tackling private finance. Its three overarching goals are: keeping below 1.5C of warming; increasing adaptation and making finance flows consistent with low emissions and resilience.

This gives a clear mandate for action: both tax reform and corporate regulation are needed to tackle financial flows, and both nationally in Ireland and at EU level, ‘polluter pays’ taxes are lacking and regulation of the financial sector remains weak and fragmented. While EU regulation exists, it is designed more to nudge investors toward more sustainable investment practices by increasing transparency and reporting levels than to enforce strict standards. And it is moving in the wrong direction: the recently passed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive excluded investments; and now the EU Commission’s Omnibus legislative proposal threatens to undo the limited gains made on climate plans, as well as blocking future attempts for stronger action at national level.

The Risk of Inaction

Fossil fuel investment is too profitable to remain weakly regulated. If Ireland continues with its current strategy of encouraging FDI at all costs, and relying on weak EU regulation, we are headed for catastrophe. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly warned that every fraction of a degree beyond 1.5°C brings irreversible consequences: collapsed ice sheets, vanishing coral reefs, and extreme weather events that will make vast regions of the planet uninhabitable. And yet, companies are developing oil and gas fields that could push global warming beyond 2°C.

Our research found that 91% of the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland were to companies that have plans for fossil fuel expansion like these. Ireland cannot afford inaction on this issue.

About This Research

The figures in this report regarding investment from Ireland are based on new research commissioned by ActionAid Ireland and Trócaire. In the paper, we uncover the scale of fossil fuel investment through Ireland, who the investors are, and in which fossil fuel companies they are investing. We analyse the current regulatory framework and explain why it is inadequate—and moving in the wrong direction. And we make specific recommendations for change, which are summarised below.

Summary of Recommendations

Regulate the private financial sector
Ireland must end its outsized role as an enabler of destructive fossil fuel investment. Ireland should introduce a strong gender-responsive national human rights and environmental due diligence framework which includes the regulation of investors with respect to human rights and the environment and climate. The transposition of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive could achieve this if downstream activities are included and the Omnibus proposal is rejected. Ireland should prohibit investments in fossil fuel expansion and require investors to implement climate transition plans consistent with a 1.5°C climate limit.

Endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Ireland should endorse developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to curb fossil fuel expansion and commit to a fair and funded phase out of fossil fuels.

Support tax justice
Ireland should support bold and fair new global tax rules through the UN Framework Convention on Tax, should adopt all OECD BEPS measures, and should conduct an updated and comprehensive spillover analysis of its tax policy. Ireland should take coordinated action globally, at the EU level and domestically to introduce a range of new taxes to mobilise finance needed for climate justice, based on ‘polluter pays’ and social equity principles such as wealth taxes for the highest earners, climate damages tax on investors, fossil fuel production taxes and levies on aviation and shipping.

Finance a just transition
Ireland must also meet its fair share climate finance obligations under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, and pay our ecological debt to the Global South. Ireland should support conditionality-free debt cancellation for countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, commit to a new UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt, moving debt negotiations from the IMF to the UN, and to a debt workout mechanism that is fully representative and fair.