Why Firewood?
Firewood and Rape
It seems unimaginable—risking rape and assault just to cook a meal for your family. Yet it's a threat that refugee women and girls face every day, all over the world. They are put squarely in harm's way as they leave the relative safety of their camps and encounter dangerous militias, corrupt soldiers and lawless rebels, and the animosity of villagers who fear their own resources being depleted.
Firewood and Respiratory Disease
The dangers of firewood don’t stop at rape: when burned inside the home, toxic fumes fill the lungs of children and threaten the health of the entire family. 1.5 million people, mostly women and children, die every year from respiratory diseases related to smoke inhalation. Using clean-burning alternatives to firewood will help decrease indoor air pollution, saving the lives of infants and young children.
Firewood and Environmental Devastation
The mass cutting of trees for firewood, combined with increasing average temperatures, is devastating the land—and the longer it continues, the less likely it is that such land will ever again be useable. Decreasing reliance on firewood, investing in reforestation and promoting greener cooking fuels can help stem this massive deforestation.
It’s time to get beyond firewood. The Women's Refugee Commission,
with our partners, is mobilizing innovators from around the world to develop
new technologies and energy solutions.
Firewood and Energy
There is growing global support for the development of alternative fuels and energy technologies: clean-burning fuels and devices that are local and sustainable. Exciting technological progress is being made by nongovernmental organizations (such as our Featured Change Agent, the Gaia Association), forward-thinking corporations and universities all over the world. Examples now being used and tested are clean-burning stoves, a vast array of solar cookers and fuels such as liquid propane gas (LPG). Yet these options aren’t nearly enough to combat the problem. What we need now are more cutting-edge ideas from the world's most innovative thinkers.
In the industrialized world, we take for granted the simplicity of turning on our stoves and plugging in our microwaves. Yet millions of displaced women and girls struggle to do what so many of us do so easily, without risk and without pause: cook for ourselves and our families. Alternatives must be developed to make cooking safer for refugee women and girls.
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by Mary Choi