New Guidance on Safe Cooking Fuel Secures International Endorsement

Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children leads global effort to ensure that safe cooking fuel is seen as essential as food or water in critical humanitarian emergencies

New York, NY - Humanitarian policymakers have officially endorsed internationally agreed-upon guidance to promote safe access to appropriate cooking fuels. By doing so, they help reduce the risk of violence faced by millions of women and girls during firewood collection and lessen the harmful effects of indoor air pollution and environmental degradation.

Vulnerable refugee and displaced women and girls are at risk of rape, beatings and murder when they leave camps to search for the wood they need to cook for their families, or to sell. When burned inside the home, firewood releases toxic fumes that threaten the health of the entire family, and the mass cutting of trees leads to severe deforestation in already unstable environments.

Despite the fact that the humanitarian community has been aware of these life-threatening problems for decades and the fact that food rations distributed to vulnerable populations must be cooked in order to be edible, the issue of fuel in refugee and displaced settings has not—until now—been systematically addressed.

The Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children has long recognized the need to fundamentally change the way the humanitarian community tackles the issue. With its partners, InterAction, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Food Program (WFP), the Women's Commission has led an 18-month inter-agency effort to build an effective and holistic response to fuel needs in diverse settings around the world.

Two critical tools that will allow agencies to address these urgent needs were officially announced today. Created by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Task Force on Safe Access to Firewood and alternative Energy in Humanitarian Settings (IASC Task Force SAFE) and endorsed in Rome on November 18 by the IASC Working Group, they are:

• A Matrix on agency roles and responsibilities for developing a coordinated fuel strategy. The Matrix defines the key fuel-related activities that must occur in order to achieve an effective fuel response in new and ongoing humanitarian crises.
• Decision Tree Diagrams on factors affecting the choice of fuel strategy—recognizing, for example, the difference in staple foods and cooking habits across different settings.

In settings of both conflict and natural disaster, a coordinated approach to cooking fuel needs to be institutionalized and the humanitarian community must be held accountable for progress. With the release of these documents, the IASC Task Force SAFE has put in place the foundation of a coordinated global strategy for addressing fuel needs at the start of all new emergencies.

The Matrix and Decision Tree Diagrams will be launched formally in early 2009, at which time hard copies of the poster-size documents will be disseminated throughout the humanitarian system for use in the field. Additional information on the new guidance tools can be found on the Web site of the Women's Commission-led International Network on Household Energy in Humanitarian Settings at www.FuelNetwork.org.

This week, the Women's Commission will host the first-ever international research conference dedicated to firewood and alternative cooking fuels in humanitarian settings, Beyond Firewood, on December 11-12, 2008 at the Hyatt Regency in New Delhi, India (see www.fuelnetwork.org/conference).