Caoimhe Butterly

Caoimhe Butterly is an Irish human rights campaigner, psychotherapist, educator and filmmaker who has spent over twenty years working in humanitarian and social justice contexts in Haiti, Guatemala, Mexico, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and with refugee communities in Europe.

She is a peace activist who has worked with people with AIDS in Zimbabwe, the homeless in New York, and with Zapatistas in Mexico as well as more recently in the Middle East and Haiti. In 2002, during an Israeli Defence Forces attack in Jenin, she was shot by an Israeli soldier. She spent 16 days inside the compound where Yasser Arafat was besieged in Ramallah. She was named by Time magazine as one of their Europeans of the Year in 2003 Butterly is a pacifist and a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organisation that seeks non-violent alternatives to armed intifada by mobilising international civil society.

Early life Caoimhe Butterly was born in Dublin to a family therapist. Her father's work as a United Nations economist moved the family from Ireland to Zimbabwe when she was a young child. She grew up in Canada, Mauritius, and Zimbabwe due to her father's work with the United Nations. She spent time working in the New York Catholic Worker Movement, then moved to Latin America where she spent three years living with indigenous communities in Guatemala and in Chiapas, Mexico. She also lived in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank for a year. She has visited Iraq on numerous occasions, she visited Lebanon,

Humanitarian work and activism After New York, in 1998, she moved to Latin America where she spent three years living with indigenous and Zapatista communities in Guatemala and Chiapas. She later worked with refugees and internally displaced communities in the West Bank, Gaza, Iraq and Lebanon, which included work as a volunteer EMT with ambulance services.

In 2001 she spent 10 days fasting in front of the offices of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, in protest at the Irish government's decision to allow US warplanes to refuel at Shannon Airport on their way to Afghanistan. She was arrested while trying to block the runway.

Siege of the Arafat compound In April 2002, she spent 16 days with other volunteers inside the besieged Muqaata compound in Ramallah, in solidarity with the Palestinians and to protest the Israeli military presence in the area. She was later wounded during a military incursion into Jenin refugee camp.

Iraq War Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Butterly campaigned against the Irish government's decision to allow the United States military to use Shannon Airport. She was initially a signatory to the Pitstop Ploughshares action that disabled a US warplane at Shannon in February 2003, but decided ultimately not to participate out of a desire to travel to Iraq in solidarity with civilians there. At a 2003 Belfast summit between US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Butterly was arrested and dragged away by her hair for smearing red jam on the riot shields of two policemen. "There is no such thing as a benign occupation" she says. "It's time to focus again on what is happening in Baghdad."

Iain Hook incident In 2005, she gave written eyewitness testimony in the inquest into the killing of UNRWA relief works project manager Iain Hook by an Israeli military sniper. Butterly was also shot in the foot during this incident.

Gaza flotilla Butterly was aboard a flotilla bringing relief supplies to Gaza during the Gaza flotilla raid on 31 May 2010.

In July 2025, she joined the first leg of the Handala, another ship carrying activists and humanitarian supplies with the goal of breaking the tightened Israeli blockade amid the Gaza war.

In August 2025, Butterly took part in the Global Sumud Flotilla, a civilian-led attempt to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Other ventures In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, she worked with mobile phone healthcare clinics and psycho-social projects there. She later returned to third level education in her early 30s, completing Masters in Development Studies and in Systemic Pschotherapy.

Current work Following 15 years working with humanitarian and rights projects in the Middle East, Butterly returned to Ireland. She is based in Dublin, though continues to work with trauma-informed psycho-social support programmes and Search and Rescue response with refugees in Greece, Calais, Italy, Lebanon and the Central Mediterranean. and writes for various refugee-related publications.