WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

 

Women's Refugee Commission

http://womensrefugeecommission.org/programs/firewood

Fuel & Firewood - Women

Cooking Fuel Saves Lives: A Holistic Approach to Cooking in Humanitarian Settings

Safe access to cooking fuel is critical in humanitarian settings. Without it, displaced people face risks to their health, safety and well-being. Every sector, including camp coordination and camp management, food and nutrition, health, livelihoods or health, has a role to play in this issue--and sectors need to work together. The Women's Refugee Commission has developed a set of fact sheets for every sector to outline the issues involved, the problems and solutions.

 

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.