Woman walking through the dry field in Malawi while carrying her baby wrapped on her back.

Irish Aid

Irish Aid is the Government of Ireland's official international development aid programme

Irish Aid

As part of our work under ICSP, we work with 21 partner organisations in seven countries to deliver life-changing work.

Ireland's Civil Society Partnership Programme and GCE (ICSP 2023 - 2027)

The goal of this programme is that people can live free from poverty, violence and discrimination. We will help communities realise their rights, exercise leadership and build resilience.

The programme will deliver across four impact areas which are;

food and income security
rights, protection and accountability,
enhanced humanitarian action and local leadership,
a humanitarian-development-peace approach.

Every day you are part of Ireland’s efforts to tackle poverty, inequality, discrimination, conflict and climate change worldwide. Through Ireland’s overseas development programme, Irish Aid, the Irish people contribute a small portion of their taxes to support development and humanitarian work carried out by organisations like us at Oxfam Ireland.

The partnership between Oxfam and Irish Aid is vital in delivering meaningful, long-term impact for communities facing poverty, inequality and humanitarian crises. Through Irish Aid’s support, Oxfam is able to respond quickly to emergencies while also investing in sustainable development programmes that strengthen resilience and protect livelihoods. Together, we work to ensure that vulnerable communities not only receive immediate assistance in times of crisis, but also gain the tools, resources and opportunities needed to build safer, fairer and more secure futures.

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Programme countries

A lady wearing a purple top and red skirt smiles at the camera. She is placing a tray of break into an oven

Malawi

We work to combat gender-based violence, promote gender equality and promote resilient livelihoods. We also work to increase the role that women and girls play in decision making and leadership.

A couple smile at each other. The man wears a pink shirt, and lady wears a black top. There are trees and a field in the background

Uganda

We work to enhance effective disaster preparedness and response, promote women’s rights, improve income and food security in mining and pastoralist communities. We also work to get children out of hazardous mining work and into school.

A lady reaches down to lift potatoes. There is a large container in front of her

Democratic Republic of Congo

We work to provide support to help people overcome crises and challenges in areas most affected by fighting. We also work to help with peace, stability, poverty reduction and the protection of civilians.

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Three people stand in a field holding crops

Zimbabwe

We work to help people to move away from food insecurity and become less dependent on humanitarian aid, address gender-based violence and realise their rights.

A lady smiles, she is carrying a large cabbage in a field. She wears a green top and blue skirt

Zambia

We work with people to promote accountability and better public service delivery, local humanitarian leadership and economic empowerment. We also work on effective disaster preparedness and response, improving agriculture and food systems, promoting women’s leadership and ending gender-based violence.

A lady in a pink hijab stands in a shop with produce around her

Somali(land)

We work especially with women and young people from pastoralist communities in areas affected by frequent droughts. We work across the themes of water, sustainable livelihoods and peace building.

A lady looks into the camera, holding two plans in her hands. Other people can be seen in the background

South Sudan

We work with people in conflict-affected communities to ensure that they have improved resilience from disasters under the themes of integrated food security, climate resilience, gender, good governance and peace building interventions.

135,710People directly reached across seven countries

37,122People reached through Acute Crisis Stream funding across three countries

1,000Boys and girls trained in the production of reusable sanitary pads in South Sudan

370Female GBV survivors trained in entrepreneurship skills in Malawi

935Households affected by repetitive droughts received cash-for-food in Somaliland

320Improved cookstoves that use significantly less firewood and charcoal were produced to reduce pressure on forests in DRC

878Farmers received a variety of drought and disease tolerant seed varieties and training in good farming practices in Uganda

185Survivors accessed GBV services at shelters in Zimbabwe

97People trained in leadership skills and citizen accountability strategies in Zambia

History Of Irish Aid Support

PG2 built on the successes, experiences and cross-learning from PGI. We have focused in delivering on three core objectives:

Increased economic empowerment for women and youth. We worked with partners, women and youth to increase employment opportunities, access to productive markets and business capital, farming and business skills and personal agency and leadership ability. More broadly, the programme aims to encourage the adoption of pro-poor policy and budget allocation at local and national levels.
Greater gender equality. We worked with partners to decrease gender-based violence (GBV) in communities by providing capacity building to GBV service providers, raising local awareness towards behavioural and attitudinal change while also increasing women's leadership and participation across all levels and improving the policy and legislative framework pertaining to gender equality.
Increased access to essential health services through holding duty bearers to account. We worked through partners with poor and marginalised people to improve local health facilities by providing capacity building to duty bearers; government officials, district health care officers and healthcare personnel, lobbying on supply chain and responsiveness of local providers and advocating for universal health care and increased budgetary support for health. Malawi is the only country to work on this objective.

Through our PGII programme in Tanzania, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Malawi we have engaged 39 implementing partners and reached an average of 75,000 people annually from 2017-2022, with economic empowerment activities for women and youth to increase levels of income, ownership of productive assets and access to employment, capital, training, markets, and technologies. We also contributed to greater gender equality, for example, by reaching 7M people with a campaign about gender-based violence (GBV) in 2022, to help increase awareness and understanding of the causes and consequence of GBV. In Malawi we worked to increase access to universal healthcare, and in all PGII countries, our influencing work sought to ensure that national legislative frameworks were in place and implemented to support pro-poor development.

The Irish Aid (IA)/Oxfam Ireland (OIE) funded development programme operated in 5 countries in East, Central and Southern Africa: Tanzania, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and South Africa. The purpose of the programme is to improve quality of life and wellbeing of targeted communities due to better and more secure livelihoods, greater gender equality, access to appropriate services and a reduction in the burden of HIV/AIDS. The programme has 3 outcomes streams: women and men realize their right to secure and sustainable livelihoods; women and girls gain power over their lives and live free from violence; and the incidence and impact of HIV/AIDS is reduced.

We worked across micro, meso and macro levels to promote the empowerment of women and girls in a manner that addressed immediate and pressing needs while also challenging deep-rooted, generational gender inequality. We recorded significant success across all three levels including:

Changing legislation – in Tanzania, we facilitated 3,000 women to engage with the 2013/14 constitutional review process in. 11 out of the 12 issues advocated by the women were included in the draft constitution. This provided a basis for review of existing laws and the creation of new laws that benefit women and end discrimination.
Access to Resources - in Rwanda we worked with micro-finance institutions (MFI) to make €253,250 available to small holder farmers to enable them to engage in new enterprises.
Changing beliefs and behaviours - in Zimbabwe the percentage of women seeking legal and paralegal support after experiencing GBV and other harmful social practice increase by 7% during the first two years of the programme from 24% to 31%.