Refugee reporters living in a Liberian refugee camp outside of Accra, Ghana, have a lot to celebrate on June 20, World Refugee Day. Today marks the two-year anniversary of the Vision, the only newspaper in the world written by and for Liberian refugees.

Despite a series of obstacles, challenges and struggles -- editors getting malaria, going without food in order to afford printing, not having an office or a paid staff -- the Vision survived. Today the paper is a thriving monthly publication with a website that attracts readers from all over the world.

Dozens of camp dignitaries, officials, international media, volunteers, friends and family of the Vision team recently turned out for a special celebration featuring Ghana's Amnesty International Director Prize McApreko, music by the famous a cappella group Ebony Heritage, and a mock reading of breaking news by a high school press club.

Buduburam refugee camp, located about an hour west of Accra, Ghana, is home to more than 40,000 survivors of Liberia's 14-year civil war. Two exiled journalists living at the camp felt that Liberians were not being portrayed fairly in Ghanaian media. They wanted a paper for their community that would accurately reflect their news, as well as educate and inform them about their rights. Without an office, and barely enough funding for printing, Jos Garneo Cephas, 35, and Semantics King, 27, pulled together the first issue.

"In the history of Buduburam, some refugees have suffered arrest and detention without trial," said Cephas. "Stories carried by the paper contributed to the release of many of these refugees. Today the negative perception and stereotype in Ghanaian media which portrayed Buduburam as being a den of people living with HIV/AIDS, a training ground for mercenary activity and that refugees are land dealers is proven wrong and the record is set straight."

Subsequent stories have included profiles on human rights NGOs at the camp, features on children's feelings about moving back to Liberia, and updates on ex-warlord and former Liberian president Charles Taylor's trial.

Only a few of the reporters who write for the monthly paper have had any formal journalism training. Currently, the newspaper's office is a small children's classroom with a bunch of plastic chairs and one small marker board for writing. None of the reporters are paid for their stories. They hope that, by having their work published, they will be able to return to Liberia and get jobs as journalists.

"Now that repatriation is in process and we've got new leadership in Liberia, the Vision is going to go back as of March 2007 to continue educating the Liberian citizenry of their basic human rights," King said. "If they have the knowledge, they will be able to identify rights violations by government agencies and politicians. If they know, they will be able to protect their rights and the rights of others. That is the vision for the Vision."

There were many moments during the past two years when the future of the paper looked grim, said King. With lack of funding and resources, the challenges piled up.

"There were times when I was hungry, I had no money for food, or to pay my bills," he said. "But somehow we managed to keep the paper going. It was our dream, and we never gave up on it."

Ghana's Amnesty International director McApreko honored the efforts and perseverance of the Vision team in a speech he gave at the anniversary celebration.

"At the time when a refugee has to leave his country, he usually has to do so when guns are next to his door," McApreko said. "On the basis of that, he hasn't got the time to take any of the wealth for which he has spent all of his life working for. The only thing he has is his mind, his health, his energies and what he has naturally. I see this reflected in the newspaper. You realize that these are people who do not have all the financial support that other media have, yet they have been able to come up with theVision."

McApreko said that Amnesty International was especially grateful to the newspaper because of its focus on human rights.

"We have given all our attention on politics and all the other events and most of the time we forget about human rights," he said. "Human rights are issues which have failed to serve in many of the developing countries. If today we have a newspaper which is redirecting all of its core competences and energies toward the realization of human rights, I think it is very heartwarming. More so because it has been initiated by people whose very human rights have been violated to the height that it's ever possible."

The paper has received a small amount of support from several international NGOs, namely Teaching Projects Abroad, (TPA) a British volunteer placement organization that funds the printing and Journalists for Human Rights (JHR), a Canadian-based NGO that provides journalism training to Vision reporters.

Richard Garner is JHR's journalism expert trainer. He officially launched the Vision at their two-year anniversary celebration.

"It's been an absolute privilege for me to work with these unbelievably beautiful and committed human beings and journalists, not only a professional privilege but a personal honor," Garner said. "I've been working for 15 years as a journalist, and I can tell you, if I live to be 150 and if I work another 100 years as a journalist, I will never accomplish anything near the level of what has been accomplished by these people here at this camp."

Garner challenged people to find another newspaper in West Africa that surpasses the quality of the Vision.

"Obviously I work in this business. I understand the enormous challenge it is to found and run a newspaper anywhere in the world where you have the resources and an environment where it's conducive to do it, and still it's tremendously difficult," he said. "I defy you to find one that absolutely outshines the way this paper looks, the way it's written, and the heart that goes into it. It's literally a miracle. If you are not inspired by this story, you should see a doctor, and get a heart transplant because this is what inspiration is all about. This is what journalism is all about."

In a northern Thai border town nestled against a jungle river that divides Thailand from Burma, a group of Burmese Karen hill tribe women are meeting in secret. A few dozen gather at the end of a dirt lane speckled with roosters and giggling children in a wooden house that belongs to one of their leaders. Most of the women live in crowded refugee camps scattered along the Thai border.

They have left the camps illegally today. They are not allowed to travel anywhere in Thailand without a pink card, and few of them have one. Some have paid their way to this meeting with bribes. Others boarded the bus and prayed the police at the checkpoints would not search them. They are all in danger of being arrested and jailed. Not just for leaving the camps, but for their work with what is considered a "rebel group" in Burma. Some, if caught here, will be deported.

These women are the leaders of the Karen Women's Organization (KWO), a massive leadership and empowerment training project involving more than 30,000 Karen hill tribe women in refugee camps in Thailand and displaced women in Burma. KWO is part of the decades-long fight to end the violent oppression and ethnic cleansing of hill tribes by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the military dictatorship in Burma.

I have come to this meeting with the radio documentary program Outer Voices, which records the stories of activist women in Asia and the Pacific Rim and the ways they are working toward social change. Today more than 140,000 Burmese refugees live in camps in Thailand, the majority of whom are Karen. For more than 50 years they have been displaced from their villages by the SPDC in an effort to quell any insurgencies from the Karen National Liberation Army, (KNLA), a resistance army fighting for a Karen state. Their houses have been burned, livestock killed, crops destroyed. Women have been raped and men have been kidnapped and forced into labor or to join the military.

"We are working to empower women in the refugee camps, and hoping for freedom for our country," said Zipporah Sein, a kind-faced woman in her mid-thirties and secretary for KWO. "One of our objectives is to be freed from all kinds of oppression. We empower women through training. We do training about women's rights, women's leadership, organizational skills and community level management, and power sharing so women have more confidence and can participate as committee members in the camps."

KWO began more than 50 years ago largely as a means to support KNLA soldiers at the frontlines and provide assistance to women and their families. Today the organization is structured into four main areas: community care and relief, education and training, income generation, and networking and information. They are supported by grants from international NGOs as well as their own fundraising efforts, which include a food stand outside of their offices. "Many of the women feel hopeless in the camps," said one 25-year-old KWO member. "They don't know how to work, they have no skills. In my opinion I would like to develop them so when we go back to our own country they will have skills and be able to work."

Although the refugee camps provide a safer home for the Karen, conditions are squalid and the camps are still at risk of being attacked by the SPDC. "In the refugee camps we built our house with bamboo," said Naw K'nyaw Paw, a KWO member, speaking in San Francisco at a Global Fund for Women event. "There is no electricity. To go to school you need a candle. The classrooms are overcrowded. The school materials are from foreign countries so we don't learn a lot about Burma. Also there are not enough textbooks, so students spend time copying during the day time in the classroom. Most of the teachers are students who graduated from high school there. How can you educate the students when even the teachers can't even go out of the refugee camps? Young people feel depressed and have very low expectations. The refugees don't have work so they don't have an income to support their children."

KWO is working hard to change this.

Their Karen Young Women's Leadership School offers training in community development, politics, environment, women's rights, leadership skills and gender awareness. Their adult literacy training program was started for women but has since become available to men, as more and more husbands wanted to keep up with their wives, according to Sein. The capacity development training is a one-year program that trains women on business assessments, program management, evaluation, accounting, "and anything they need in the camps," said Sein.

"We have workshops for one week or three days in human rights and gender awareness and women's leadership. We also support and accompany children with hygeine packs for the first six months of their lives. We also have a woman's safe house, we call it a relief house for victims of domestic violence. They can go and stay there for a month or a week," said Naw K'nyaw Paw.

Women are also being trained in counseling so that they will have the skills to talk to victims of violence.

KWO continues to support schools in IDP areas. IDPs are internationally displaced people within Burma. Schools are provided with food and other assistance so students can continue to study despite the conflict. Although estimates vary, it is believed that there are more than half a million IDPs in Burma today.

Income generation workshops include weaving training and sewing training and micro business training as well as candle and soap making. KWO loans money to women in the refugee camps, so they can run a business and learn how to keep accounts. "To strengthen our organization we also do networking. Once a month we invite all of the NGOs to our resource center so we can share our activities, and work together to find more funding," said Naw K'nyaw Paw.

Perhaps one of the most important activities of the KWO is their effort to document the violence against women. They publish a magazine called Karen Women's Magazine every three months, as well as a newsletter.

"KWO collects a lot of information about rape," said Sarah Prior (name changed to protect her identity), KWO's vice president. "The women, in the day time, are forced to carry very heavy loads, up and down the mountains by the military and at night they are raped. Sometimes gang raped. So it's very hard to bear. They are cooking, they are searching for firewood in the jungle and they are arrested. Some are walking in the street or in the cinema hall and they are grabbed. Some are at home. I met four women who escaped. Three were married. One is 17 years old and not married. In the day time they have to carry big shells, very heavy and in the night time they were raped. One thing that they told me, "auntie, we don't know whether we are pregnant or not, we don't know. We don't want, but it's our blood. What will I do? I cannot give them answer. It's our blood. If we don't love them, what are we going to do?"

For KWO, as well as the Karen National Union and the Karen National Liberation Army, the answer is peace.

"The military would like the Karen to lay down their arms and go back. The Karen will never do that," said Prior. "If we lay down our arms, they're going to cut off our head. We the refugees are saying that we need a truce that we can trust. A genuine peace so that we can go back. And until then we would like to have some training so that we can walk on our own feet."