The Afghan Women's Boxing Club - the only such organisation in the country - boasts 20 members, mostly girls in their late teens, who share a passion for a sport that even in less conservative countries might be deemed inappropriate for young women....
What do Adele, Leona Lewis, Katie Melua and the late Amy Winehouse have in common other than their talent and extraordinary success over the past years? They're all alumni of the London School for Performing Arts & Technology, more commonly known as ...
Charities try to help people in less affluent parts of the world with a variety of donations, from food and monetary payments to sending their staff to care for people without access to medical services. But Oxfam's latest campaign - "The Big Bra ...
Like much of the Sahel, Chad's Guera region is experiencing another bout of an all too familiar phenomenon: severe drought, food shortages, hunger and chronic malnutrition. Up to 18 million people across the Sahel are facing a severe food crisis and ...
Despite the fact that they were in the vanguard of the revolution which toppled the country's long serving strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh in February 2012, Yemen's women have yet to see any meaningful improvement in their daily lives. Not only are a ...
The Rev George Buannie is a powerfully built man, with a voice to match. And in the dirt-poor village of Binkolo, in northern Sierra Leone, he's talking serious stuff to a local farmer. Not about how tough it is to survive in one of the poorest ...
'We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X. How can a ballpoint pen fight with a gun?' Robert Mugabe, June 2008. Zimbabwe's electoral commission, derided for its procrastination following the first round of the presidential election in ...
Basamae The last thing Basamae Maombi would see was the face of the man raping her. She had recognised him and called out his name, hoping the pain and indignity of the attack would stop. But it only made things worse. He held her down, pulled out his...
Zimbabweans are facing a ferocious cholera epidemic which has affected more than 90,000 people since August 2008 and killed at least 4,100. In April 2009 the charity Merlin reported that the situation remained grave: 'The scarcity of trained health ...
A bloody denouement to 26 years of civil war has left Sri Lanka's minority Tamil population facing an uncertain future. Following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, up to 270,000 Tamils were held in camps under the control of victorious government forces. ...
Amid the bleakly beautiful mountainscape of eastern Zimbabwe, a vast new diamond field was discovered in 2006. These 400 square miles of scrubland around Marange promised to bring untold wealth to this bankrupt nation, but for the people living ...
Clutching her mop and standing in a pool of dirty water, Laukaziemma Koko stands apart. For most of her life she lived in the shadows, working as a cleaner at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein for a wage of 70 pence an hour. She was ...
'Dear God, how many can there be?' whispered the captain of the Libyan coastguard vessel to his deckhand. As the rescue ship drew closer its searchlight picked out the corpses floating around the wrecked fishing boat. Even for experienced mariners, ...
Exhausted and caked in mud, they plough wearily on searching toxic water for traces of gold. Some look west from where they fled, across the border to Zimbabwe; towards home. There, the life of miners are even harder. Here in Mozambique, at least, ...
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in three Somalis suffers from some kind of mental illness. Wars, famines and natural disasters not only leave the dead to be buried but also the survivors who need to go on living. While many will...
Some groups either affected by or suffering from HIV/AIDS do not have access to proper care. These include injecting drug users, sex workers and homosexuals, many of whom are excluded because of what they are or what they do. They are more vulnerable...
The West is accustomed to tales of barbarism committed in third world countries by military regimes led by ill-educated thugs in uniform - Bokassa, Amin, Pol Pot. But it has been flummoxed by Mugabe. He is a highly educated, suave and eloquent man ...
Nigeria's Niger Delta region, where the Niger river flows into the Gulf of Guinea, has been a source of great wealth for the past five centuries. In the 18th century, slaves were taken across the Atlantic from the coast of West Africa. Later, palm ...
Twic county has suffered the worst excesses of conflict. Located on the border between north and south Sudan, for much of the last 25 years it was at the epicentre of a brutal civil war. Massacres of civilians were frequent, while women and children were...
The rise of Al Jazeera has been nothing if not meteoric. From its launch in 1996 as an Arab language news and current affair channel, the channel has become one of the most widely watched and respected global 24-hour news broadcasters. The Qatar ...
When a regime bombs and shells its own people - in hospitals, bakeries, schools, apartment blocks and places of worship - it knows it is losing the battle. Aleppo is as brutal a place as anywhere on earth - neighbourhoods laid to waste, bodies lying ...
Britain has experienced the wettest January since 1767 and overflowing rivers are bursting their banks, adding to standing water on sodden fields that has nowhere to flow. The village of Muchelney on the Somerset Levels has been particularly badly ...
In February 2002, Jonas Savimbi, leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) was shot dead in a gun battle with the Angolan Army. His demise brought about a quick end to the civil war that had raged between UNITA and the...
San art adorns the new South African bank notes. Their smiling, wrinkled faces appear on adverts and postcards across the country everyone knows the stereotypical image of the slightly built hunter covered in an antelope skin loincloth and carrying ...
There are 420 helipads in Sao Paulo. That is 50% more than in the whole of the UK. Sao Paulo's chaotic traffic, with its six million cars, oppresses and complicates even more the ordinary citizen's frantic life in Latin America's busiest city. Those with...
From 12 June, 12 new or newly refurbished stadiums around Brazil will become the stages for one of the biggest sporting events in the world - the Football World Cup. And for the first time since 1950, the cup returns to Brazil, the nation which has ...
Towards the close of the 20th century, Witold Krassowski photographed the British at work and at play. Colin Jacobson, then picture editor at the Independent Magazine, describes how it all began: 'It was late and I should have been at home. The phone ...
Under an elevated toll road, beside railway tracks and a filthy river in north Jakarta, many of the city's poor live in makeshift dwellings. But two sisters from Jakarta's more comfortable suburbs are making a very real difference to people's lives. They...
At the end of October 2010, Mount Merapi (literally Mountain of Fire) in central Java menacingly rumbled into activity after a 4 year lull. Smoke can be seen rising from the top of the mountain at least 300 days a year and many locals are inured ...
Like those of other countries blessed with plentiful natural resources, Indonesia's mining industry is caught between the lure of huge profits driven by rising global demand and the cost to the environment and public health. Tin, gold and coal are ...
On 9 July 2014, almost 140 million Indonesians (or 75% of those eligible to vote) turned out to cast their ballots and decide their nation's future for the next five years. With the return to democracy still within very recent memory, Indonesians ...
Zack Canepari was commissioned by Habitat for Humanity, an international housing charity, to photograph one of their projects near Dallas, Texas in 2010. What he found was a small, largely poor, self-contained community that could be anywhere in the ...
'As you can imagine, regular practice of synchronized swimming is a great way to maintain health and strength - and a great way to meet active and fun women! We have many members who have had arthritis, joint replacements, and other health challenges - ...
He usually starts his day with a Pall Mall. Then he maneuvers his skinny, forty year-old frame through his cramped apartment and into his bathroom.A sign over the door reads "I Can Do Anything.".He brushes his teeth quickly and then starts on his ...
Donuts and Ghost-rides, Boxes and Buckets, Cools and Stangs. It all started in the Bay Area back in the 90s. Deep in East Oakland they'd meet in empty parking lots and spin circles until the police came. The Sideshow, they called it. Elaborate and ...
Tudo Bom?! All Good?!Throughout the four weeks in which the world's top footballing nations battle it out for the game's highest trophy - the World Cup - Zackary Canepari is going on a road trip across Brazil to capture a flavour of this vast, ...