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LAST UPDATE | 25 Nov 2025
PROTESTS AGAINST GENDER-BASED violence are being held in Dublin, Cork and Limerick today to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
The organisers, Rosa Socialist Feminist Movement, are encouraging participants to wear red and carry lights through the cities.
Every day, 137 women and girls are killed by intimate partners or family members internationally – one death every 10 minutes, according to the United Nations (UN), which released its annual femicide report today.
According to the UN, the number of women and girls killed intentionally remains unchanged despite years of global commitments.
In Ireland, gender-based violence has been described as a “pervasive issue” – over one third of women are subjected to domestic abuse and 90% of women who have died violently have been killed by a man known to them, according to Women’s Aid.
The national organisation, which works to prevent and address domestic violence, is today launching a “potentially lifesaving” free programme for family and friends of victims of domestic abuse and coercive control.
President Catherine Connolly will deliver the opening address at the launch of Women’s Aid Allies and Informal Supporters Programme, which is available to anyone who wants to understand how to safely support someone they know who is being subjected to domestic abuse and coercive control.
Jill, a survivor of domestic abuse, said if her family, friends and professionals had understood what was really happening, her journey to safety and recovery might have been much shorter.
“I was bullied, beaten, controlled. I slept in my clothes, ready to run with my son at a moment’s notice. I lived in constant fear of the consequences of doing something he didn’t like,” she said.
“My sister got frustrated when I couldn’t leave, the Garda who came after I was badly assaulted didn’t understand why I went back to my husband. My doctor only offered me medication and maternity professionals missed the signs that I was being beaten and living in so much fear during my pregnancy. I sometimes wonder how different things would have been if just one person understood what my silence really meant.”
Jill said she’s not blaming anyone, but she feels the education and understanding of domestic violence should be changed.
“It is so important that professionals really understand what happens in domestic abuse and coercive control. Domestic abuse is everyone’s concern, and everyone should get informed. You might save a life,” she said.
ActionAid Ireland is launching its Christmas campaign today, at which Natasha O’ Brien will speak.
Natasha was assaulted in 2022, and a subsequent suspended sentence for her attacker sparked nationwide conversations.
“Gender-based violence is not a distant issue. It is happening in every community and every county in Ireland and globally. It is shocking to see the numbers of women are killed every year, just because they are a woman. Too many women live in fear, without adequate resources or access to justice,” she said.
“I know what it feels like to be silenced, dismissed, and made invisible. For years I believed that my voice didn’t matter until I used it, and this country stood with me. But countless women never get that chance. They suffer in silence, in fear, and without support. That’s why this campaign matters. We cannot look away. We cannot stay silent.”
Survivors such as O’Brien and Hazel Behan will also speak at the Dublin protest today alongside Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger.
Speaking on the plinth at Leinster House this morning, Coppinger said the stats today from the UN and the statistic from the UK last week that more mothers are killed by their sons than by strangers, are shocking and “really bring home how endemic, how rooted misogynistic violence is in our society”.
Coppinger said she hopes a Sinn Féin bill to introduce protection orders for victims of sexual violence, which reaches second stage in the Dáil today, will be passed.
The bill, being brought forward by Sinn Féin’s justice spokesperson Matt Carthy, would amend the law so that when someone is convicted of a crime of sexual violence, a court could impose an order at the same time restraining the person convicted of the offence from approaching the victim.
Such a provision already exists in harassment legislation, but is not available to victims of sexual violence.
Also raising the issue of violence against women on the plinth today, Social Democrats Senator, Patricia Stephenson, said Ireland is not doing enough to prevent violence against women and girls, and that too often our responses are reactive, rather than proactive.
She said usually when we have public discussions about violence against women, it is because some horrifying event has happened or because “some incredibly brave woman has put her head above the parapet”.
“It always feels reactive, not proactive. When it comes to things like prevention, we’re not doing enough. In terms of the education space, the online safety space, there are huge gaps in what the Government are offering, and we need to do more,” she said.
Stephenson recently introduced a bill to the Oireachtas that would give survivors of domestic abuse and their dependents three free months of travel.
“It’s a moderate measure…and yet the Government still put a 12-month time delay on it. So we hear this rhetoric of ‘tackling it, zero tolerance, doing everything that we can’, and yet, it doesn’t feel like the actions match the rhetoric that we hear on that.
“And that has to change, because, sadly, across this island, violence against women is going up and not going down,” she said.
With reporting from Jane Matthews
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