[Stoves] If Stoves Could Kill

Christina Espinosa c_espinosa1 at u.pacific.edu
Wed Sep 19 15:47:26 CDT 2012


Dear Sam,
Thanks for sharing this with the group. It is important for us to keep in mind how we publicize and advertise ourselves.

Best,
Christina Espinosa

On Sep 18, 2012, at 1:43 PM, Samer Abdelnour <samer.abdelnour at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
> 
> Below are excerpts from a Stanford Social Innovation Review blog
> illuminating how stoves came to be thought a protection tool for women
> and girls in Darfur and globally. It raises some important questions
> designers may not grapple with on the day to day. I hope you find it
> interesting.
> 
> SA
> 
> 
> If Stoves Could Kill
> 
> Political advocacy, humanitarian intervention, and the “manageable problem.”
> 
> Samer Abdelnour | Sep. 17, 2012
> 
> Cooking up the case for Darfur’s stoves
> 
> Fuel-efficient stoves, a docile domestic technology, have been
> promoted for decades as tools to combat deforestation and the negative
> health effects of traditional cooking. During the Darfur crisis, they
> took on an entirely new function as a technology to prevent sexual
> violence. In 2005, Washington-based Refugees International (RI)
> released a widely publicized call advocating stoves:
> 
> “By reducing the need for wood and emission of smoke, a switch to
> simple, more fuel-efficient stoves could reduce the time women spend
> collecting wood, a task that exposes them to the risk of rape and
> other forms of gender-based violence.”
> 
> Backed by USAID and public donations, dozens of NGOs began to promote
> stoves as a way to protect Darfuri women and girls from attack.
> 
> How did stoves come to be thought of a solution to sexual violence?
> 
> During the 1990s, in Kenya’ s Dadaab refugee camps, NGOs and advocacy
> organizations (including RI) sought solutions to pervasive sexual
> violence. Unable to provide comprehensive protection for women inside
> the camps, RI advocated for the provision of firewood to address one
> spatial dimension of rape: that which occurs when women leave camps to
> gather firewood.
> 
> When Darfur emerged as a significant domestic political issue in the
> US, advocacy networks—including the Save Darfur Coalition and RI—drew
> from longstanding racial and gender frames to form a US-centric
> understanding of the conflict as an Arab-led genocidal rape.
> 
> This, combined with the idea that firewood provision would help
> prevent rape, permitted efficient stoves—for the first time—to emerge
> a solution to sexual violence in Darfur. Encino-based Jewish World
> Watch succinctly captures the tragic narrative:
> 
> “Women and girls who have fled the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, are
> particularly vulnerable to rape while performing the critical task of
> collecting firewood for cooking.”
> 
> Realizing the complexity of risk
> 
> Having spent time in Darfur researching the competitive dynamics of
> stove-promoting NGOs, it became clear to me that the overly simplistic
> assumptions on which stove solutions are predicated do not reflect the
> complex intersection of ethnicities, violence, and gender roles.
> 
> This recognition is not without precedence.
> 
> In fact, multiple assessments reveal the provision of firewood to have
> been an erroneous “solution” to rape:
> 
> “Banditry and acts of sexual violence, especially rape, were known to
> occur frequently in the camps. Considerable publicity highlighted the
> rape of women while collecting firewood outside the camps.”
> 
> And in a 2007 report, RI withdrew its claim, saying that in Darfur:
> “There is little evidence that producing fuel-efficient stoves reduces
> violence against women.”
> 
> Furthermore, in a 2009 report, Amnesty International reveals that
> Darfuri refugees in Eastern Chad, also recipients of stove
> interventions, are just as vulnerable to sexual violence inside camps
> as they are outside of them.
> 
> No simple, global solution
> 
> In Darfur, the “stove solution” persists through a number of untruths,
> including simple notions of “Arab” and “African”—and that only ”Arabs”
> rape. Camps are construed as safe, and no consideration is given to
> women and girls who must travel for work, to markets, or to collect
> grasses. These untruths are reinforced through the work of US-based
> advocacy networks and NGOs.
> 
> Amazingly, despite RI’s retraction and historical experiences,
> determined US-based organizations continue to promote efficient
> cookstoves as a technology that reduces incidents of rape—not just in
> Darfur, but globally.
> 
> For global promotion, narratives of sexual violence are further
> generalized. For example, Berkeley-based Potential Energy markets a
> blanket experience of displaced women in Darfur and Ethiopia: “Outside
> the relative safety of refugee camps, they are vulnerable to acts of
> violence”.
> 
> It is unethical, not to mention impossible, for advocacy organizations
> and NGOs to claim or guarantee that vulnerable, displaced,
> conflict-affected women and girls are safe in camps, let alone that
> they can be made safe through using cookstoves. Yet to step away from
> this claim undermines the suggestion that stoves can “solve” rape. The
> elaborate risks facing women and girls should never be simplified such
> that simple technologies are thought to solve complex humanitarian
> crises.
> 
> For a link to the full blog post, see:
> 
> http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/if_stoves_could_kill
> 
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