I have spent over a decade working in, on, and with Myanmar. Time spent listening to women talk about their experiences of the many conflicts affecting not just their lives, but the lives of the people who came before them, and the people who will come after them. This is what I?ve learnt. Women are the backbone of their communities. Women are responsible for making sure their families—their children, the children of their sisters and brothers who passed too early, their veteran husbands, their drug-addled sons—survive. And this is getting more difficult as each year passes. The conflict in northern Myanmar has lead to increased poverty: the lands of fleeing families have been confiscated, and markets are hard to reach when checkpoints close the road to all but the wealthy or the connected. Many lose all that they own when they flee. Houses are looted, burned down, taken over by soldiers.