Women, War and Displacement

November 16, 2016

Sotiria Kyriakopoulou is in Dublin on Wednesday 16^th November to launch Women, War and Displacement a joint report by members of the Irish Consortium on Gender Based Violence (ICGBV). Sotiria is Protection Manager for ActionAid Hellas; her role is focused on the protection of women and the most vulnerable people as part of ActionAid’s response to refugees on Lesvos Island and in Athens.

On Tuesday 15^th November Sotiria presented to TD’s, Senators and their representatives in Leinster House. She discussed the situation for women refugees in Lesvos and Athens and how ActionAid is responding to the specific needs of female refugees.

Women, War and Displacement report

The Women, War and Displacement report illustrates the connection between heightened conflict, displacement and increased levels of gender based violence, and argues for a more robust gendered dimension of gender based violence response in the Global Compacts on Migration and Responsibility Sharing for Refugees, to be produced over the next two years.

In addition, case studies drawn from the programmes of ICGBV membership agencies are featured in the document, giving voice to women who have experienced gender based violence as a result of conflict and displacement. You can read the report Women, War and Displacement here.

ICGBV was formed in 2005 and brings together Irish humanitarian and development organisations, Irish Aid and the Irish Defence Forces, in an effort to combat gender based violence.

Why is ActionAid working with women and the most vulnerable?

The increased restrictions on refugee movement in Europe mean people are spending longer periods in overcrowded transit locations. This has led to a progressively deteriorating humanitarian situation with regard to women’s vulnerability to sexual assault and exploitation in overcrowded camps. The issues identified include:

An increased risk of gender-based violence linked to the lack of privacy in overcrowded collective shelters
Disintegration of family and community networks
Insufficient income to meet basic needs
Many women have experienced sexual or gender based violence during transit or at their point of origin
There are also significant cultural, language, and administrative barriers in accessing services from health services to legal services.

Women Friendly Spaces

ActionAid’s programme provides psycho-social support to women facing trauma as a result of the conflict they fled, their journey and their displacement. In specially designed women friendly spaces, services offered are:

A protected environment where women can share their problems and gain respite.
Psychological first aid, including individual case management and referral through social workers, psychologists, and interpreters as well as group counselling.
Distribution of dignity kits.
Referral for medical, legal, and shelter assistance.
Social mobilization and resilience building activities including interpretation, information, initiatives to build resilience and help people cope through skill building activities such as language lessons, financial literacy, crafts etc.

About Sotiria Kyriakopoulou

Sotiria is Protection Manager for ActionAid Hellas, her role is focused on the protection of women and the most vulnerable people as part of ActionAid’s response to refugees on Lesvos Island. Sotiria coordinates the ActionAid team of cultural mediators and psychosocial experts in Lesvos and provides them with guidance when required. She facilitates training for the team and intervenes in the most complex cases. She also represents the organisation in the working groups that try to address critical gaps in response.

For the past 10 years, she has been working in settings in Greece and Scotland with vulnerable and marginalised groups of people. Her background is in Psychology and Counselling, helping her to work in a person-centred and respectful manner and by always abiding with the Humanitarian Code of Conduct.

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.