For more than six months in 2011, Ywe Ja refused to leave her village in Myanmar's Kachin State despite heavy fighting. It was where she was born, and she had built a life there as a teacher with a farmer husband and a young child.
Fighting between the ethnic insurgent group the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Myanmar army in the country's north erupted that year after the breakdown of a 17-year ceasefire.
"Then the authorities started seeing Kachins as part of the KIA," Ywe Ja said. "Business and social rivals could accuse you of having links with the KIA and the army would arrest you without any investigations."
Worried that her husband would fall prey to these suspicions and heavily pregnant with her second child, she finally left Tar Law Gyi, a village about two hours' drive from Myitkyina, the Kachin state capital, in March 2012.
Two weeks after arriving at the St. Paul Jan Mai Hkawng camp, she gave birth.
"I never thought I'd end up staying here so long," she said, sitting in the thatched-walled meeting room of the camp that she now helps to manage with the support of local group Karuna Myanmar Social Services, run by the Catholic Church. (Courtesy of Jakarta Globe)
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