Amar Guriro

Multimedia Journalist

Pakistan

Amar Guriro is multimedia environmental journalist and aspiring photographer based in Karachi, Pakistan. His writing has been published by mainstream Pakistani and international media outlets, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), BBC-Urdu, UPI, Dawn, thethirdpole.net, Crisis Response Journal, The News on Sunday, The Friday Times, News Lens Pakistan, Daily Times, Pakistan Today among others. He is IVLP alumni 2011 and member of United Nations Asia Water Journalists Forum, regional coordinator of Wash Media South Asia and President of National Council of Environmental Journalists (NCEJ) Pakistan.
He reports on environment, climate change, wildlife, water, disasters, religious minorities and climate refugees.

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Portfolio

ABC

ABC News
01/11/2017
Amar Guriro

Amar Guriro is a freelance contributor to ABC News, and is a multimedia journalist based in Karachi, Pakistan. He is IVLP fellow 2011. He is president of the National Council of Environmental Journalists (NCEJ), and has contributed to many international publications, including Newsweek, BBC, and United Press International.

ABC News
01/10/2017
Why honour killings continue in Pakistan despite tough new laws

Updated January 12, 2017 13:40:26 Disoriented and distressed, Hayat Khan sits in a Karachi jail thinking of the day he murdered his sister to protect his family's honour. "She used to talk to a boy over the telephone," the 20-year-old says from his cell.

ABC News
08/24/2016
Hindus flee Muslim extremists after Koran burned in Pakistan

Posted August 25, 2016 06:57:33 In the provincial town of Ghotki near Pakistan's border with India, Ashok Kumar is packing his bags. He's reached breaking point. Like many of his neighbours, and other Hindus in Sindh province, the small trader is fleeing to India.

Dawn

DAWN.COM
06/11/2016
Catch-22: Karachi's marine pollution shows catastrophic results

A team of five exhausted fishermen has just returned from a three-day tiring journey of the Arabian Sea. After anchoring their wobbly 30-foot boat at the fishing jetty of Karachi's historical fishing settlement, Ibrahim Hyderi, they start unloading nets and emptying the plastic baskets. Finally they pile up their catch, which comprises small fish.

DAWN.COM
04/17/2016
Global Warming: Wishing for a cool summer

In June 2015, Karachi witnessed one of the worst heat waves in recorded history - temperatures rose to 43.7oC killing more than 1,500 people in just five days. However, experts fear that this year's heat wave may be even worse than the last.

DAWN.COM
08/28/2016
Pakistan's coal expansion brings misery to villagers in Thar desert

Thario Halepoto village is located in the Thar desert in south-eastern Pakistan, around 400 kilometres east of the port city of Karachi. You can hear the scream of peafowl and bells sounding around the necks of grazing goats and cows. Women wearing colourful clothes carrying water pitchers on their head walk between the sand dunes.

DAWN.COM
03/13/2016
Caste and captivity: Dalit suffering in Sindh

While the men are routinely subjected to everyday violence, the more heinous attacks on scheduled castes are aimed at girls and women Daughters of another god by Amar Guriro It is a story of fear and helplessness, unending torment and unrelenting tribulations: Dalit parents are left without a voice or access to justice while their daughters are kidnapped and converted Fear makes perfectly good people provide perfectly valid justifications for ultimately vile practices.

DAWN.COM
01/25/2017
Will Pakistan ever become polio free?

PAKISTAN: THE LAST BASTION OF THE POLIOVIRUS By Naseem Salahuddin and Laila Rizvi In Pakistan, polio cases have decreased by over 99pc since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 cases then, to 54 in 2015, and 19 reported in 2016. With the last population census conducted in 1998, the hurdles in estimating the number of children requiring vaccinations are significant.

DAWN.COM
07/26/2015
Feature: Rule of the jogi

It was around midday when we entered the colony, just in time to catch Ustad Misri Jogi's class in the courtyard outside his small temple. The ustad is conspicuous by his orange turban, a long orange robe and very large earrings.

Daily Times

Dailytimes
02/16/2015
DailyTimes | In real life, not all poor children are slumdog millionaires

KARACHI: Improper waste disposal and lack of adequate management plan to collect and dump garbage scientifically, has become a serious issue for Pakistan's biggest city which is Karachi. In Karachi, garbage is thrown in the slums and untreated raw sewage flows through drains. <img src=

Dailytimes
02/16/2015
Increasing plastic pollution poses serious threat to marine life

KARACHI: In a rare incidence, a flat needlefish (Ablennes hians) locally called 'Alore', got entangled in the handle of a plastic cup was caught alive by Momin Khan, around 270 km southwest of Karachi, Daily Times learnt on Friday. The fish was taken onboard and tried to detach the cup attached to its midsection.

Dailytimes
02/16/2015
Garbage dumping for land reclamation puts environment, marine life at stake

KARACHI: Instead of the scenic view of the beach with sea breeze from the Arabian Sea and its mangroves, there is heavy fog of smoke emitting from the enormous piles of garbage - the dumper trucks were unloading trash - increasing height of the already giant waste mountains.

Dailytimes
02/16/2015
World Oceans Day: Karachi pollution slowly killing Arabian Sea

KARACHI: The World Oceans Day is a global day of ocean celebration which is celebrated every year on June 08 since 2008 when the United Nations recognised it as special day. The overall theme for the World Oceans Day 2017 was set as

Dailytimes
02/16/2015
Hyper-arid Achro Thar seeks a new lease of life

Dozens of the goats, sheep, cows and camel have died in drought-hit Achro Thar of Sindh, and there are reports about the death of a large number of peacocks in this arid region. Despite all that, neither the Sanghar district government nor the provincial government has started any relief work in the area.

Dailytimes
02/16/2015
Animals, birds are dying in Sindh's Achro Thar, people could be next

Dozens of the goats, sheep, cows and camels have died in drought-stricken Achro Thar of Sindh and there are reports about death of a large number of peacocks in this arid region. Locals including politician Atta Chaniho believe people will start dying next if government doesn't start relief efforts.

Dailytimes
With onset of summer, Karachi witnesses acute water shortage

KARACHI: Not in any remote village of Thar Desert, but in the middle of the Pakistan's biggest city of Karachi, Faiza spends many hours everyday in search of water, as their colony doesn't have drinking water connections officially, as it is a slum and government think that if they are given legal connections, inhabitants will claim for the land they live on .

Dailytimes
02/16/2015
DailyTimes | Murderer of polio worker walks free despite anti-honour killing law

KARACHI: Despite recently introduced anti-honour killing law, Munir Shaikh, who was arrested three years ago for killing his wife Naseem Munir Shaikh, a polio worker, could not be convicted as he was allowed to walk free from the prison. On the midnight of May 22, 2014, in the jurisdiction of Karachi's Sachal police station, Naseem Munir was killed.

Dailytimes
02/16/2015
World Oceans Day: Karachi pollution slowly killing Arabian Sea

KARACHI: The World Oceans Day is a global day of ocean celebration which is celebrated every year on June 08 since 2008 when the United Nations recognised it as special day. The overall theme for the World Oceans Day 2017 was set as

Dailytimes
Rare blind Indus Dolphin survey kicks off

KARACHI: The 30-day survey, focusing on the population status of the endangered blind Indus dolphin has initiated by World Wildlife Fund for Nature, WWF-Pakistan. The survey, conducted every five years, began on March 21 and will continue for next one month.

Newsweek

Newsweek Pakistan
11/05/2014
For the Love of Hussain

Nov 05 2014 By Amar Guriro In Sindh, Hindus mourn Imam Hussain. Earlier this month, as Shia Muslims around the world mourned the martyrdom of Imam Hussain-the grandson of Islam's Prophet who was assassinated at the Battle of Karbala in 680-a small town in Pakistan's Sindh province offered scenes of interfaith osmosis that date back several generations and that would be unthinkable anywhere else in the country.

United Press International (UPI)

UPI
07/06/2015
Encroaching sea levels endanger Pakistan's Indus Delta

KARACHI, Pakistan, July 6 (News Lens Pakistan) -- From its start in the Himalayas, the Indus River flows almost 2,000 miles to the Arabian Sea, ensuring there is fertile land for farmers along the way and sustenance for Pakistan's wildlife. The river is in trouble, though.

UPI
09/20/2013
Rains bring new life and tourism to Thar Desert

KARACHI, Pakistan, Sept. 20 -- Deadly monsoons across much of Pakistan have caused the Thar Desert to bloom, spurring tourism that is helping the local economy to flourish. The rains each season since 2010, which cause flash floods in middle and upper Pakistan, have brought new life to the once-barren desert in southeastern Pakistan along the Indian border.

BBC-Urdu

The Friday Times

Thefridaytimes
The fallout

In February this year, People's Party veteran Zulfiqar Mirza surprised everyone when he told a press conference at his farmhouse in Badin that serious differences had emerged between former president Asif Zardari and his son, the PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

Thefridaytimes
No Holi for Hindus of Thar

Pakistan's biggest religious minority community, the Hindus - a majority of whom live in the Sindh province's Thar Desert - will not be able to celebrate their religious festival of Holi on March 17, because of an ongoing famine.

thethirdpole.net

The Third Pole
08/23/2016
Pakistan's coal expansion brings misery to villagers in Thar desert

Thario Halepoto village is located in the Thar desert in south-eastern Pakistan, around 400 kilometres east of the port city of Karachi. You can hear the scream of peafowl and bells sounding around the necks of grazing goats and cows. Women wearing colourful clothes carrying water pitchers on their head walk between the sand dunes.

The Third Pole
12/08/2015
Pakistan: Women on the frontline of climate change

Climate change, as a global phenomenon, is hard to imagine. Those affected by it, and those finding ways to adapt, are often lost behind the demands of activists and the promises of governments. In the South Asian Himalayan region the faces of those people are overwhelmingly the faces of women.

DAWN.COM
04/21/2015
Still marooned after 2010 floods in Pakistan

Five years after Pakistan's worst floods, thousands of displaced people continue to live makeshift lives in a slum on the outskirts of Karachi with the government doing little to help them. It has been five years since the devastating floods of 2010 that drove Rubina Hisbani out of her village, five years of living like a refugee in a makeshift hut near Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi.

Himal South Asian

Himal Mag
Urn catalogue

Amar Guriro is a staff reporter with the Daily Times, Karachi. More than sixty years after Partition, sealed borders and complicated visa procedures continue to separate thousands of families in India and Pakistan - even to impact the dead.

Himal Mag
End of the River?

Of the two largest Southasian deltas, one flourishes as the other faces the threat of being overrun by the sea. At a time when melting glaciers, shrinking coastal lands, depleting freshwater sources and vanishing forests are hot issues across the world, the tidal mangrove forests of the Sundarban constitute an encouraging example of effective conservation.

The News on Sunday

TNS - The News on Sunday
08/16/2015
Story of Karachi

A city whose population grew by 80 per cent in one decade needs some drastic low-cost housing solutions Muhammad Ramzan runs a small grocery shop inside Labour Square in the outskirts of Karachi near the Super Highway.

TNS - The News on Sunday
06/05/2016
Losing a way of life to climate change

Changing weather patterns in Sindh and Balochistan region and the rise in sea level call for both long and short term measures Tippan Island is one of the major Islands of River Indus Delta in Thatta district of Sindh. During the past few years, it has been nearly submerged by seawater.

TNS - The News on Sunday
08/30/2015
Unsheltered and endangered

The recent floods have threatened wildlife in katcha areas of Sindh At an abandoned bus stop near a small village of Pyaro Goth in Dadu district, a man packs meat in shopping bags to distribute among a large number of people gathered around him.

TNS - The News on Sunday
12/21/2014
Thar: A controversial exit

With over 600 children having died of starvation in the drought-hit Thar, why was the medical team forced to return? A 230-member team of doctors, specialists, gyneacologists, pediatricians, MBBS final year students, nurses and paramedics from the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS), Jamshoro, Sindh reached Thar Desert, but was forcibly sent back by the police authorities in the last week or so.

TNS - The News on Sunday
02/08/2015
Sindh's state of denial

The rise of militancy in the province in recent decades remained under-reported by the media. The attack on Imambargah in Shikarpur has therefore come as a rude shock, along with a warning that extremist forces will now target liberal and secular forces

TNS - The News on Sunday
03/01/2015
The missing cause

One year on, Mama Qadeer Baloch has now decided to walk from Pakistan to Geneva, Switzerland It's been a year since Baloch leader Mama Qadeer Baloch entered Islamabad after the 2,800 kilometre-long march from Quetta to Islamabad via Karachi for the safe release of abducted Baloch activists.