Scores of underage Rohingya girls fleeing violence and starvation in their homeland of Myanmar and in the refugee camps of neighboring Bangladesh are being forced into arranged marriages with older men in Malaysia who frequently abuse them.
A dozen Rohingya child brides — the youngest of whom was 13 — told The Associated Press they are kept as virtual prisoners in their own homes. Several said their husbands rape and abuse them, and many have been forced to bear children despite not being ready for motherhood. Global apathy toward the Rohingya crisis and strict migration policies have left these girls with almost no options.
Photo and video provided for Kristen Gelineau’s report.
A school for blind children and young adults in Myanmar is helping train and educate a population that is traditionally left with little to no options for independence. Reading, writing, and vocational skills are all part of a program that accepts students age 5-25. Photographed in Yangon, Myanmar.
The longest war in the world continues to devastate the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians across Myanmar- especially ethnic and indigenous minorities living in the country’s border states.
Some images from this series were taken for Global Ground Media, for which I wrote a three part series about the origins, modern-day impact on civilians, and what various key players have expressed it would take for the conflict to end.
The use of mangrove as charcoal throughout Asia and large-scale aquaculture projects are some of the largest threats to Myanmar’s remaining mangroves.
I spent three weeks along Myanmar’s massive coastline tracing the charcoal supply chain, visiting aquaculture sites, meeting those working to create alternative fuel sources, and learning how the destruction of mangroves is impacting local communities and the environment.
Originally reported for Mongabay with story texts by Wudan Yan. Photo and additional reporting by Victoria Milko.
Click here, here, here and here for the stories and additional photos.
Menstrual regulation is a legal “last resort” method of family planning used in Bangladesh. While the procedure is legal it is still considered highly taboo in Islamic culture. While family planning centers and health clinics are legally bound to providing the service few actually do, while others do not have the proper equipment, training, or after-care supplies available.
I traveled to rural Bangladesh with IPPF to photograph and write about one of their latest projects working towards destigmatizing the procedure while also providing training and supplies for post-procedural care.
Photo and stories available here.
At the end of April 2018, peaceful protests began being organized across the country, calling for an end to the violence in Kachin State and beyond. Largely organized by youth and civil society organizations, the protests have often resulted in participants being arrested under archaic laws infamous for stifling freedom of expression in Myanmar. Protests have also turned violent, with peaceful protestors and journalists alike being attacked by police forces.
(Photographer's Note: A photo from this story won the 2017 Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Honourable Mention for Excellence in Photography)
From secret meetings in rural town to flashy Facebook profiles and YouTube videos, the illegal sport of cockfighting is alive and flourishing in Myanmar.
Photographed and written for Frontier Myanmar, this story took me to Myanmar's southern Mon State. A full copy of the story can be found here.
Thirty miles north of Myitkyna, in Myanmar's northern Kachin State, three illegal gold miners stand knee-deep in mud, standing in the middle of a mine that was closed, with what they say was no warning, earlier in the month. The men dig through stones, lay down green floor mats and sift through sand that lies sparkling in the Sun, the promise of gold in its glimmer.
Using their bare hands and a single garden hoe, the three men don’t stop working, even when asked questions about their lives and safety.
“So you know that it’s poisonous and potentially killing you slowly, but you use and directly handle it anyways?” they’re asked.
The miners let out a dry laugh, still moving stones and hauling red heaps of mud as they answer the question.
“Of course we do. But what choice are we given?”
Photographed and written for Frontier Myanmar, this story investigated the dangerous levels of mercury present in the waterways of Myanmar.
In 1890, Sir Thomas Lipton arrived on the island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, to purchase a plot of land that would become the first tea estate in his global tea empire. These days, in the Ambadandegama Valley located just a few miles from Lipton's original estate, another experiment in tea production is unfolding.
Tucked into the side of a precipitous mountain, Amba Estate is a tea operation that shares 10 percent of its revenues with its workers. That's a novel approach here in Sri Lanka, a country that's one of the world's largest exporters of tea — an industry that employs more than 1 million of its 22 million residents.
View the entire story here on NPR.
