Energy Cafe: Voices in the Dark
Voices in the Dark – The Ethics of Energy in Refugee Camps.
In-Person and Online
There are now over 120 million forcibly displaced people worldwide – many of whom live in refugee camps without access to energy. In refugee camps all over the world, refugees have to find their own access to energy and are only given limited cooking resources and minimal electricity by humanitarian agencies. The ethics of this are questionable – especially as the claims made by many humanitarian organisations to be providing sustainable energy have been critically disputed.
This Energy Café will examine these ideas and present findings from a new book published by Berghahn on the topic: Voices in the Dark draws upon a decade of original research to provide evidence on the energy lives of refugees – focusing on refugee camps in Rwanda and Kenya. The book identifies that urgent change is required within humanitarian responses to forced migration and the climate crisis to ensure that future energy provision in displacement settings is sustainable, reliable, and affordable for refugees.
Sarah Rosenberg-Jansen is an affiliate of the Energy Ethics Centre at the University of St Andrews and a Research Associate at the University of Oxford, where she is a member of the Refugee Studies Centre and Linacre College. She is an independent consultant and a senior advisor on humanitarian energy and climate issues. Sarah is a co-founder of the Global Platform for Action for Sustainable Energy in Displacement Situations (the GPA).