With shorn heads and swathed in pink robes, the girls of Mingalar Thaikti nunnery sit cross-legged on wooden floorboards as they begin to pray, bleary-eyed and stifling yawns.

Darkness still blankets the impoverished Yangon suburb as their Buddhist chants compete with the whines and snarls of street dogs.

All of the nunnery’s 66 girls – aged between four and 18 – are from the Palaung ethnic group and were born in an area of eastern Shan state plagued by conflict between local rebel groups and the military.

“There was a lot of fighting,” Dhama Theingi, 18, told AFP, explaining why her parents sent her hundreds of kilometers (miles) from home nine years ago.