Delighted to announce our platform speakers on the International Women’s Day Rally 2026
Youth Action NI
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Mary Robinson
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Maggie Ronayne
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Deirdre Mc Kenna
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Sharon Coyle
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Azadeh Sobout
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Youth Action NI ✳︎ Mary Robinson ✳︎ Maggie Ronayne ✳︎ Deirdre Mc Kenna ✳︎ Sharon Coyle ✳︎ Azadeh Sobout ✳︎
International Women’s Day Rally 2026
Strength in Solidarity
Join us on Saturday 7th March from 10.30 in Writers Square for the big International Women’s Day Rally, to get in the mood, Belfast Film Festival will have the big screen up in the square to entertain us. Our amazing Chidambaram will be leading the rally as we march along Royal Avenue to City Hall for some amazing speeches.
After the rally join us in the brilliant 2 Royal Avenue where we will have stalls, story telling, yoga and the fantastic Feminist Photo Booth!
Get your feminist swag on and be part of the celebration and the many campaigns that women have towards a more fairer and equal world!
Running order for the rally will be women’s centre’s and groups, youth groups, community groups, campaign groups, trade unions, businesses and political parties.
This is a family friendly march, where everyone is welcome and treated with respect. We will not tolerate any banners, flags or materials that promote hate speech or promote ideologies that are not in line with our mission and values
Azadeh Sobout is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. She is an Iranian activist, writer, and educator whose life’s work is anchored in a decade of organising across struggles for refugee justice, Indigenous sovereignty, Palestinian freedom, and feminist, antiracist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist futures.
Deirdre McKenna (b.Dublin 1973) is an artist, organiser and activist from the disabled community. Deirdre has contributed to the creative life of the city for more than 25 years and has acted as an advocate for disabled and non disabled people’s rights, with a specific interest in the arts. In 2018 Deirdre was commissioned by Reclaim the Agenda to make their iconic banner, marking the 100th anniversary of votes for women: “every time I see photos of the banner on our streets, at protests and rallies, i see the product of my labour in the hands of the amazing people who carry it, and stand in solidarity with all the women who inspired it - I am there!”
Mary Robinson is a co-founder of Project Dandelion, which is a women-led global campaign for climate justice, Adjunct Professor for Climate Justice at Trinity College Dublin, and a member of The Elders. She served as President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002. She is a member of the Club of Madrid and the recipient of numerous honours and awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the President of the United States Barack Obama. Between 2013 and 2016, Mary served as the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy in three roles; first for the Great Lakes region of Africa, then on Climate Change leading up to the Paris Agreement and in 2016 as his Special Envoy on El Niño and Climate. Her Foundation, the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, established in 2010, came to a planned end in April 2019.
A former President of the International Commission of Jurists and former chair of the Council of Women World Leaders she was President and founder of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative from 2002-2010 and served as Honorary President of Oxfam International from 2002-2012. She was Chancellor of the University of Dublin from 1998 to 2019.
Mary Robinson serves as Patron of the International Science Council and Patron of the Board of the Institute of Human Rights and Business, is an Ambassador for The B Team, in addition to being a board member of several organisations including the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the Aurora Foundation. Recently she became joint Honorary President of the Africa Europe Foundation. Mary’s memoir, ‘Everybody Matters’ was published in September 2012 and her book, ‘Climate Justice - Hope, Resilience and the Fight for a Sustainable Future’ was published in September 2018. She is also co-host of a podcast on the climate crisis, called ‘Mothers of Invention’.
Sharon Coyle is a specialist in violence against women and girls (VAWG), safeguarding, and organisational learning, with over a decade of experience working across policy, practice and multi-agency leadership. Her work focuses on strengthening systemic responses to domestic abuse and coercive control, improving professional capability, and embedding survivor-centred, evidence-informed approaches across complex systems.
She currently serves as Training and Partnerships Manager at Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA), where she leads the design and delivery of specialist training and strategic partnerships. At SEA, she works in partnership with the financial services sector, frontline support services and women’s rights organisations to maximise reach and impact, helping organisations embed best-practice responses to economic abuse within policy, service delivery and workforce development.
In 2025, Sharon was awarded the President’s Award for Northern Ireland at the Women in Banking & Finance Awards for Achievement, recognising her leadership in advancing best-practice responses to economic abuse across the financial services sector.
Sharon also serves as a Domestic Abuse Related Deaths Independent Reviewer and Chair, providing reflective oversight to reviews of domestic abuse-related fatalities with a focus on accountability, systemic learning and prevention. She is currently based in Northern Ireland.