On February 15th the Executive Committee of Banúlacht took the very difficult decision to close Banúlacht with effect from March 31st. This decision was taken because of a number of factors that have combined to make it impossible to continue to do our work according to our feminist ethos.

Banúlacht was founded in 1990 and over the years our work was funded by many different funders. Our focus on linking the local and global, our feminist ethos and our role within the women’s community development sector has never been easy for funders to categorise, and this, in parallel with a changing funding environment, has meant that maintaining a diverse funding base has always been a struggle. In spite of all our efforts to access funding from other sources, the organisation had been funded only by Irish Aid and Trócaire since 2009. From 2009 -2011 our funding was reduced by 52% in total. Trócaire, after consistently funding the organisation for 20 years, declined to fund Banúlacht in 2011. This withdrawal of funding left Banúlacht more financially vulnerable and dependent on Irish Aid.

At a policy level, over the last few years there has been a marked shift in Irish Aid’s approach away from an understanding of development education as facilitating activism to its current position in the 2012 development education guidelines which stipulates that funding cannot be used for campaigning and advocacy work.

Since its foundation, Banúlacht, in consultation with women’s organisations in Ireland and the global South, has worked to facilitate the engagement of grassroots women and women’s community development organisations in advocating for the realisation of women’s human rights at local, national and international levels. This ethos, defined in our Feminist Principles and our Strategic Plan, underpinned all our work. Dependence on Irish Aid, in the absence of other sources of funding that could be used for more critical policy focused work, effectively required us to abandon the advocacy and activist dimensions of our work and our ethos as a feminist organisation.

After much deliberation and with a heavy heart, Banúlacht decided that compromising our feminist principles for the sake of funding went against the integrity of the organisation and our mission and vision. We therefore decided not to apply for Irish Aid funding, which meant the closure of Banúlacht on March 31st.

After 22 years of feminist global solidarity work, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all our feminist sisters, members and friends for the solidarity expressed at this time. We wish you all the very best in your continued work for the realisation of women’s human rights locally and globally.

Mná Sasa!