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.
Nepal's child soldiers trade rifles for tools
Author: Peter Biro
The Indian-built jeep struggles to negotiate the steep and muddy path leading to the village of Dhuseni in eastern Nepal. The track winds though a landscape of majestic hills and terraces lined with tea, the major crop here. Only a few kilometres away, across the border with India, lie the famous tea plantations of Darjeeling. We pass women in colourful saris carrying large baskets with tea leaves across rickety bamboo bridges straddling fast-flowing streams.
But the beautiful landscape sits in stark contrast to the realities of life here. Nepal, one of the world's poorest countries, is only slowly recovering from the civil war which rocked this small Himalayan nation for 10 years. Like many other rural parts of country, this area was a hotbed for the communist insurgency that pitted Maoist guerrillas against the Nepalese army.
...
Author: Peter Biro
The Indian-built jeep struggles to negotiate the steep and muddy path leading to the village of Dhuseni in eastern Nepal. The track winds though a landscape of majestic hills and terraces lined with tea, the major crop here. Only a few kilometres away, across the border with India, lie the famous tea plantations of Darjeeling. We pass women in colourful saris carrying large baskets with tea leaves across rickety bamboo bridges straddling fast-flowing streams.
But the beautiful landscape sits in stark contrast to the realities of life here. Nepal, one of the world's poorest countries, is only slowly recovering from the civil war which rocked this small Himalayan nation for 10 years. Like many other rural parts of country, this area was a hotbed for the communist insurgency that pitted Maoist guerrillas against the Nepalese army.
...
'They said Bhutan was their country, not ours'
Author: Peter Biro
Purushottam Ghimire, 30, has lived in quiet desperation for most of his adult life. Surviving on humanitarian food rations, he is unemployed and unable to leave the confines of Goldhap, a camp in eastern Nepal that houses nearly 10,000 of the country's 108,000 refugees from Bhutan.
"It's not a good or interesting life we have here," he contemplates as we sit down over a cup of tea under a blue tarpaulin flapping in the wind. "We have neither Bhutanese nor Nepali citizenship and we are not allowed to work. All of us here have become inactive and depressed."
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Author: Peter Biro
Purushottam Ghimire, 30, has lived in quiet desperation for most of his adult life. Surviving on humanitarian food rations, he is unemployed and unable to leave the confines of Goldhap, a camp in eastern Nepal that houses nearly 10,000 of the country's 108,000 refugees from Bhutan.
"It's not a good or interesting life we have here," he contemplates as we sit down over a cup of tea under a blue tarpaulin flapping in the wind. "We have neither Bhutanese nor Nepali citizenship and we are not allowed to work. All of us here have become inactive and depressed."
...
The poorest of Nepal's poor
Author: Peter Biro
The sun has barely risen over the arid fields of Chediya, a village inhabited by one of the poorest and most neglected groups in Nepal. Known as Kamaiya, the people here are former bonded labourers.
For generations, the Kamaiya had to work under slave-like conditions on plantations to repay debts that had been passed from one generation to another.
...
Author: Peter Biro
The sun has barely risen over the arid fields of Chediya, a village inhabited by one of the poorest and most neglected groups in Nepal. Known as Kamaiya, the people here are former bonded labourers.
For generations, the Kamaiya had to work under slave-like conditions on plantations to repay debts that had been passed from one generation to another.
...
Through Congo by motorbike, monkey heads for lunch
Author: Peter Biro
There are no maps for this part of Congo, but local health official Merveille Njolombe is here to guide us through the bush.
"It will take many hours to reach our destination," he says vaguely as he kick-starts his motorbike.
...
Author: Peter Biro
There are no maps for this part of Congo, but local health official Merveille Njolombe is here to guide us through the bush.
"It will take many hours to reach our destination," he says vaguely as he kick-starts his motorbike.
...
Trying to cross Congo in a tropical storm
Author: Peter Biro
The plane touches down with a heavy thud and as the doors open, a rush of warm, humid, tropical air hits me in the face. This is Kindu, the provincial capital of Maniema, a rural, war-torn and neglected province in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The first stop in the town of Kindu is a small shop where we rent motorbikes and stock up on fuel, food and water. Old bicycle inner tubes are used as luggage straps to attach our bags to the back of the motorbikes.
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Author: Peter Biro
The plane touches down with a heavy thud and as the doors open, a rush of warm, humid, tropical air hits me in the face. This is Kindu, the provincial capital of Maniema, a rural, war-torn and neglected province in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The first stop in the town of Kindu is a small shop where we rent motorbikes and stock up on fuel, food and water. Old bicycle inner tubes are used as luggage straps to attach our bags to the back of the motorbikes.
...
