Just Takin' Another Gang Rape for the Team!
Cassandra Nelson, in her Field Journal: Darfur, of November 4, 2004, posted on the Mercy Corps web site, explains why providing stoves, and the gas and kerosene to use them, is such a high priority when it comes to women’s safety and security. In her article, Ms. Nelson interviewed five refugee women from Godaba Villiage, who had to flee to a camp. While they are relatively safe in the camp, women must leave the camps for hours to collect firewood. Why? "Collecting firewood is an essential chore in the camps," explains Nelson. "It is used to cook all their meals and is sold for money to buy food items, such as meat, and medicines that are not available in their aid rations. The women must go out into the countryside several times a week so they can feed their families. They walk up to two hours away from camp into unprotected territory to search for wood. In the coming months, they will have to walk even further as the amount of wood is rapidly being depleted by the densely populated camp."
While out searching for wood, the women are vulnerable to gang rape by the Janjaweed militia. In the past week alone, the women told Nelson, they had heard about five attacks on women from their camp.
Well, where are the men? Why don’t the men go for firewood? Why don’t the men go along to protect the women? "Our men cannot come with us to protect us," one of the women told Nelson. "If they are caught outside the camp by the Janjaweed they will be killed. We will only be raped, so we must go alone."
What a choice! You send your male family members out and risk their murder, or you go yourself because you will "only" be raped! How would you gals out there like to have a life like this, where you had to risk gang rape every day to secure the supplies your family needed to live! And how would you guys like sitting around a refugee camp worrying about your wife, mother, daughter, or sister out there getting raped in order to collect firewood! I’ll bet you never realized a gas or kerosene stove could be this important.
"This will not completely solve the problem," Susan Romanski, Global Emergency Response Officer for Mercy Corps in Darfur told Nelson. "But it can significantly reduce the risk these women face. It is a difficult problem to solve. The tradition here is to cook with wood, no one knows how to use kerosene or gas stoves and the fuel is not available here. Trucking fuel in regularly is not a viable solution due to the poor road conditions and the need to use the limited trucks available to transport critically needed food."
While out searching for wood, the women are vulnerable to gang rape by the Janjaweed militia. In the past week alone, the women told Nelson, they had heard about five attacks on women from their camp.
Well, where are the men? Why don’t the men go for firewood? Why don’t the men go along to protect the women? "Our men cannot come with us to protect us," one of the women told Nelson. "If they are caught outside the camp by the Janjaweed they will be killed. We will only be raped, so we must go alone."
What a choice! You send your male family members out and risk their murder, or you go yourself because you will "only" be raped! How would you gals out there like to have a life like this, where you had to risk gang rape every day to secure the supplies your family needed to live! And how would you guys like sitting around a refugee camp worrying about your wife, mother, daughter, or sister out there getting raped in order to collect firewood! I’ll bet you never realized a gas or kerosene stove could be this important.
"This will not completely solve the problem," Susan Romanski, Global Emergency Response Officer for Mercy Corps in Darfur told Nelson. "But it can significantly reduce the risk these women face. It is a difficult problem to solve. The tradition here is to cook with wood, no one knows how to use kerosene or gas stoves and the fuel is not available here. Trucking fuel in regularly is not a viable solution due to the poor road conditions and the need to use the limited trucks available to transport critically needed food."
posted by Theodosia @ 4:05 AM
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