The following re-post is an excerpt from U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s speech, about the impact of clean cookstoves on women.
“I’ve talked with women who walk long distances from their refugee camps to find wood for their cooking fires, putting them at great risk of assault and rape. I remember being in the very large camp in Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. And all the women told me the same thing – that they were in this camp where there were many international NGOs and humanitarian relief organizations, but they were still having to go out on their own to find wood, to make sure that they had an adequate supply of fuel, and they were subject to attack when they left the camp. And it struck me as sort of strange that here we had all these people; couldn’t we organize either teams of people to help the women as they went out and to protect them, or was there a better way that we could pursue to really eliminate this problem?
So we are supporting a global effort to provide cleaner and safer stoves that require less fuel and, therefore, fewer trips through dangerous territory. The Clean Cookstoves Global Alliance that we are at the center of creating and expanding is doing research with the National Institutes of Health because this is a three-for-one investment. Yes, women don’t have to stray so far from home or from a refugee camp to have fuel to cook the family’s food. Secondly, children and women will not be dying from respiratory diseases which are, unfortunately, the byproduct of breathing that smoke all day every day, sometimes in very confined spaces. And thirdly, we will cut down on black carbon and black soot, which is good for the environment. So we’re very focused on bringing this to scale over the next years, and we have a lot of support in doing so.”
Source: U. S. Department of State, Secretary Clinton’s Remarks on Women, Peace and Security, Georgetown University, Washington DC, December 19, 2011.
