How a stove can save a life
For the past two months, I’ve been working on a feature story for our quarterly magazine Every Child that focuses on the rape epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a woman and mother of a daughter, this has been an extremely disturbing subject to tackle.
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| © UNICEF/HQ07-0244/Giacomo Pirozzi |
| Girls stand outside their school at the Djabal refugee camp, near the town of Goz Beida in south-eastern Chad. The majority of the camp’s residents have fled here to escape the ongoing conflict in Sudan’s Darfur Region. UNICEF provides the camp with education, therapeutic feeding, and water and sanitation services. |
This form of violence not only plagues the DRC. It’s a problem in just about every conflict situation around the world. Rape has become so common that many people accept it as a byproduct of war, as if it were something natural and beyond anyone’s control. Even more appalling is that many rape victims are children”some as young as four years old.
In Sudan’s Darfur region, rape is a widespread tactic used by warring militias to intimidate and terrorize communities. Many of these sexual attacks occur when girls venture into the wilderness to collect firewood that is essential for boiling water and cooking.
Since the start of the conflict in Darfur, UNICEF has been helping children survive through immunization, nutrition and clean water programs. Now, UNICEF is helping protect young girls by providing fuel-efficient stoves.
The idea may sound strange. But these fuel-efficient clay stoves require half the wood used by regular stoves. And for girls, this means less wood to collect, fewer trips to the wilderness, and ultimately, a greatly reduced risk of assault.
So far, UNICEF has trained more than 500 women to make these special stoves, which have benefited hundreds of girls and their families. It’s another example of UNICEF’s unique use of innovation”one of many simple (yet brilliant) and cost-effective ideas that protect children and help them survive.
What other innovative ideas do you think can help children today? How else can UNICEF protect young girls from violence?
Dina:
Thank you for this report. As difficult as it is to read about the violation of women and girls, this is a very important subject.
The overall problem is very difficult to deal with, but it is amazing how simple some of the most effective protections can be. I hope that the clay stoves can become very widely used. Another simple measure that can be used to protect the women and girls collecting firewood is the same as one used here in the United States — never go out alone. It is at least marginally safer against a lone assailant if the wood collection is a group project.
I’ll be sure to read your feature story. Thank you for your service.
how about calling women and girl children (of age above 3 years) in separate groups and educating them about the vulnerability of young girls falling prey to sexual abuse and how the girls should always go in groups for firewood collection with a male chaperon. the young girls also should be informed of the dangers lurking around by men and that any mishap should immediately be reported to an elderly female member of the family so that the young girls can be counselled suitably and equipped with survival skills.
thanks.
latha vidyaranya
Thank you for your story, you are right it was painful to read, but oh so necessary. Thank you to UNICEF for coming up with innovative, and practical solutions. It saddens me greatly that rape is considered a by product and barely an eyebrow is raised.
Again thank you for raising awareness about this epidemic problem.
How about letting the MEN collect the firewood?!
I went to two workcamp in Togo wirkong with mentaly disable kids in a school. The first year we all eat together adult and pupil, however the next summer the togolese they gave the food to the pupils first and then after they left we eat. When I asked the local leader of the camp told me it was the tradition that kids don’t eat with the grown up. Of course I knew that not to be true and it was out of ignorance (which i mean lack of knowledge) and fear of impossible contagious that they would not eat with the kids. I decide to take it slow and try to work around the problem, one day we had two french guest at lunch so when I saw that the kids were been served I asked the two french women to go and start eating with the pupils of course as a guest no one dare to say no and also it’s a bad maner to make the guest eat alone so in the end we all set down. After that day every meal was done together. I was able to play the local hospitality to defeat a prejudice. The year before I would have just took the not eating together explanation as it’s face value. The camp went great and we did a great theater performance with the kids of the school and the one from the neighboor.. breaking down even more stereotypes I believe that had a stronger impact that building a wall . Over the camp we had many failures along the way, sometimes you just to bit the bullet and wait for a solution around the problem. You have to accept that you are powerless in some many instances