Caoimhe Butterly - Early Life

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. 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 Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank for a year. She has visited Iraq on numerous occasions, she recently visited Lebanon, where she protested British prime minister Tony Blair's visit to the country after he allowed US bomb shipments to be sent to Israel via Britain during the 2006 Lebanon War.

Butterly was brought up in a culture of liberation theology, which, she says, "deeply inspired" her to spend her life campaigning for human rights. At a very young age, she says, she developed a deep sense of duty. "I've always felt the need to almost a painful degree of needing to stand up against injustices in whatever contexts they lie." She left school at 18, wanting to travel, and headed to New York, where she spent time working in soup kitchens for the US Catholic Worker movement, which was founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933.