Chung wins CARE Award for Afghan work.

Thursday, 6 September 2007

Jean Chung won the 2007 CARE International Humanitarianism Photographic Award for her report 'Maternal Mortality in Afghanistan: where women die of giving birth'.

Afghanistan has the second-highest ratio of women dying childbirth after Sierra Leone, and one of its districts ranks as the highest in the world.

“The patriarchs of the families don’t want outsiders seeing the women so they don't get proper medical care,” Jean Chung told an audience at Visa pour l'Image.

She explained the difficulties of working in Afghanistan as a women of east Asian descent. There are Chinese prostitutes in Kabul and this is how she was viewed by many of the Afghan men, she said. “I’ve been groped by Afghan men so many times,” she said. “I can't afford body guards so I'm more exposed to danger. They cost $2,000 a day.”

Jean Chung won a prize of $8,000 Euros.