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Women's Refugee Commission - 25 Photo Essay

http://womensrefugeecommission.org/blog/1084-photo-blog-our-fuel-and-firewood-team-visits-refugee-camps-in-kenya

KENYA - REFUGEE WOMEN - PHOTO ESSAY - FUEL & FIREWOOD

Asha* also comes from Somalia and struggles to find ways to cook for her family. She says that “100 bags of food are useless without firewood.”

The Women’s Refugee Commission traveled to Kenya’s Kakuma and Dadaab camps this summer to talk with refugee women about what kind of challenges they face when cooking food rations for their families.

Read more about the Women’s Refugee Commission Fuel and Firewood Initiative and what we’re doing to ensure refugee women have safe access to cooking fuel.

Photos by Women's Refugee Commission, Mariangela Bizzarri and Gerald Martone/IRC

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http://womensrefugeecommission.org/programs/firewood

Download our fact sheet on the Women's Refugee Commission's Fuel and Firewood Initiative.

FUEL & FIREWOOD

The collection, supply and use of firewood and alternative energies in humanitarian settings has been associated with a variety of harmful consequences, including but not limited to: rape and assault during firewood collection, environmental degradation and respiratory and other illnesses caused by the indoor burning of biomass materials.

These consequences span traditional humanitarian response sectors and rarely fit neatly into the existing mandates of operational nongovernmental agencies (NGOs) and UN agencies. As a result, household energy-related initiatives are often ad hoc and do not take into account the lessons learned in other sectors or regions.

We were in Kenya this summer conducting a joint assessment with the World Food Programme (WFP) about safe access to cooking fuel in refugee camps. We visited Kakuma and Dadaab camps to talk with refugee women about the kinds of cooking fuel they are using and how they obtain it. As part of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee for Safe Access to Firewood and alternative Energy (SAFE) in Humanitarian Settings, our goal is to ensure that refugees have safe access to cooking fuels that do not pose health or safety risks.

Firewood rations are distributed by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Kakuma camp every 60 days but for the average household, this ration only lasts 5-10 days. Refugee women face hard choices once their firewood rations run out. They've been telling us that they often resort to trading their food rations for cooking fuel in order to cook food for their families.