Peter Biro
Peter Biro is a senior communications officer with the International Rescue Committee (IRC). He is responsible for covering the IRC's emergency and development work, most recently in Afghanistan, Chad, Congo, Indonesia, Iraq, Liberia, Sudan and Thailand. Biro, who was born in Sweden, has also worked as a journalist and photographer in Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America and for the United Nations in Kosovo, East Timor, Cambodia and Sierra Leone.
Camp below the cliffs, home for new Myanmar refugees
Author: Peter Biro
A gentle rain is falling as I visit Nuh Bo, a small Buddhist temple compound in Thailand where 2,000 people have taken shelter after fleeing the latest outbreak of violence inside Myanmar, also known as Burma. Their makeshift camp, surrounded by soaring limestone cliffs covered in dense foliage, lies on the Thai side of the muddy, fast-flowing Moei River that marks the border.
The people here, members of the Karen ethnic group, arrived in June after the Burmese army and a pro-government militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), attacked forces of the rebel Karen National Union, which has been fighting for autonomy for more than half a century. Over 4,000 Karen civilians were forced to flee across the border in what is believed to be one of the largest movements of refugees across the Thailand-Myanmar border in a decade.
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Author: Peter Biro
A gentle rain is falling as I visit Nuh Bo, a small Buddhist temple compound in Thailand where 2,000 people have taken shelter after fleeing the latest outbreak of violence inside Myanmar, also known as Burma. Their makeshift camp, surrounded by soaring limestone cliffs covered in dense foliage, lies on the Thai side of the muddy, fast-flowing Moei River that marks the border.
The people here, members of the Karen ethnic group, arrived in June after the Burmese army and a pro-government militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), attacked forces of the rebel Karen National Union, which has been fighting for autonomy for more than half a century. Over 4,000 Karen civilians were forced to flee across the border in what is believed to be one of the largest movements of refugees across the Thailand-Myanmar border in a decade.
...
Poverty and insecurity after Russia-Georgia war
Author: Peter Biro
As Russian tanks rolled into the village of Aradeti on the border between Georgia and the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia, Nikoloz Titvinidze gathered his two children and fled for his life.
There were shells falling everywhere, Nikoloz, 48, says. It was horrible.
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Author: Peter Biro
As Russian tanks rolled into the village of Aradeti on the border between Georgia and the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia, Nikoloz Titvinidze gathered his two children and fled for his life.
There were shells falling everywhere, Nikoloz, 48, says. It was horrible.
...
The plight of Thailand's migrant workers
Author: Peter Biro
About an hour's drive west of Thailand's second largest city of Chiang Mai is Pong Yang Nai, a cluster of small farms surrounded by hills covered with lush vegetation. At this time of year, a merciless sun beats down on the agricultural workers ploughing the fields or planting chilies, flowers and vegetables. On any given day as many as 800 people labour here - the majority are impoverished migrant workers from neighboring Burma.
In the shade of a bamboo shelter by a row of small flowers that will later be picked and sold for use in Buddhist ceremonies, I sit down with Nang Kham, 37. She says that she left her village in Burma eight years ago.
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Author: Peter Biro
About an hour's drive west of Thailand's second largest city of Chiang Mai is Pong Yang Nai, a cluster of small farms surrounded by hills covered with lush vegetation. At this time of year, a merciless sun beats down on the agricultural workers ploughing the fields or planting chilies, flowers and vegetables. On any given day as many as 800 people labour here - the majority are impoverished migrant workers from neighboring Burma.
In the shade of a bamboo shelter by a row of small flowers that will later be picked and sold for use in Buddhist ceremonies, I sit down with Nang Kham, 37. She says that she left her village in Burma eight years ago.
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Giving Peace a Chance in Karamoja
Author: Peter Biro
For generations, the people in Uganda's northeastern Karamoja region have been fighting a bitter inter-clan war that has taken countless lives and plunged the region into abject poverty. The conflicts centre around the most important possession here: livestock.
"We used to go out in a large group with automatic rifles to steal cows," says Peter Lomokol, a young man from the Matheniko group, one of several sub-clans in the area. "If we saw someone from the other clans with cows, we started to shoot. When we had killed the men, we took their cattle. And then soon after, people from other groups would come and steal our cows and sheep."
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Author: Peter Biro
For generations, the people in Uganda's northeastern Karamoja region have been fighting a bitter inter-clan war that has taken countless lives and plunged the region into abject poverty. The conflicts centre around the most important possession here: livestock.
"We used to go out in a large group with automatic rifles to steal cows," says Peter Lomokol, a young man from the Matheniko group, one of several sub-clans in the area. "If we saw someone from the other clans with cows, we started to shoot. When we had killed the men, we took their cattle. And then soon after, people from other groups would come and steal our cows and sheep."
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Karamoja's people face starvation
Author: Peter Biro
Dark blue clouds are building up on the horizon and a cool breeze announces the midday rain. Boys tending to cattle are hurrying off to find shelter under the many acacia trees that dot the landscape. Here in Karamoja, a remote region in Uganda's northeast, rains are a blessing. But it is too little, too late.
According to the UN World Food Program, over 700,000 people need urgent food relief in Karamoja. The crisis is blamed on long dry spells coupled with a population explosion, environmental degradation, rising food prices and chronic insecurity. Just before I came here to visit the programs of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Karamoja's Moroto district, local authorities revealed that 108 people had died of starvation in the district since January.
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Next entries
Author: Peter Biro
Dark blue clouds are building up on the horizon and a cool breeze announces the midday rain. Boys tending to cattle are hurrying off to find shelter under the many acacia trees that dot the landscape. Here in Karamoja, a remote region in Uganda's northeast, rains are a blessing. But it is too little, too late.
According to the UN World Food Program, over 700,000 people need urgent food relief in Karamoja. The crisis is blamed on long dry spells coupled with a population explosion, environmental degradation, rising food prices and chronic insecurity. Just before I came here to visit the programs of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Karamoja's Moroto district, local authorities revealed that 108 people had died of starvation in the district since January.
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