The ban on growing opium poppy has devastating consequences for the Afghan rural population. The Taliban have yet to offer alternatives. Calls for international aid are growing louder.

Scraping opium resin off a seedpod in Myanmar's remote poppy fields, displaced farmer Aung Hla describes the narcotic crop as his only prospect in a country made barren by conflict. The 35-year ...

In the years since, he has received innumerable death threats. Women and children of poppy farmers have hurled stones at his policemen. One of his eradication tractors was torched. The grim axiom ...

Since 2016, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in partnership with the Government of Laos, has worked to promote ...

According to the UNODC Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, opium harvesting provided the equivalent of up to 119,000 full-time ...

somebody has to fill the markets and that may push the Myanmar opium poppy farmers to increasingly engage in opium poppy cultivation.” In 2024, however, UNODC says the fighting at the heart of ...

A farmer in the southern province of Helmand ... However, when the Taliban took action against poppy cultivation in May of this year, thousands of angry villagers opposed the government forces.

Scraping opium resin off a seedpod in Myanmar's remote poppy fields, displaced farmer Aung Hla describes the narcotic crop as his only prospect in a country made barren by conflict.