'Violence, impunity, and horrific human rights abuses continue in the Democratic Republic of Congo.' That was how Human Rights Watch began their report on events in the country in 2008. Sadly, the description could have been copied and pasted from any ...
For the first time in human history, the majority of the world's population live in cities. At the same time, the number of people living in urban slums has passed the one billion mark; every third person living in a city is a slum dweller. The ...
What has become known as the "Jasmine Revolution" - the ousting of Tunisia's autocratic president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali who ruled the country for 23 years - is sending shockwaves through the Arab world. The coterie of despotic, kleptocratic rulers ...
The war between the Israeli army and Hamas militants in Gaza, dubbed "Operation Cast Lead", lasted for 22 unrelenting days from 27 December 2008 until 18 January 2009. In the wake of the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, shell-shocked Palestinians ...
The days of ultra-cheap labour and little regulation in China's manufacturing sector are gone. The Pearl River Delta, a former rice growing region, was remodelled into an industrial powerhouse for textiles, sporting goods and toys by the economic ...
China is in the midst of a love affair with coal - but it is not the healthiest of relationships. Year after year, China's production and consumption of coal increases. Worryingly, so do the fatalities. Shanxi Province is China's main coal-producing...
Like other photographers captivated by the events in North Africa and the Middle East, Christian Als was keen to get to Libya to document the uprising against the Gaddafi regime first hand. Though he couldn't be there in the first weeks of the ...
Families of victims of enforced disappearance in Algeria have been demanding for years that the authorities reveal the fate and whereabouts of their relatives, who vanished after being taken away by security forces during the violent civil war of the ...
One year on from the country's independence, South Sudan is facing a litany of challenges; none bigger than the health situation of those in the fledgling state's refugee camps. UNHCR has now placed the health crises afflicting camp residents as their ...
In June 2011, President Obama announced his intention to start the gradual withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan after a decade of bloody and often controversial engagement. But for many Afghanis, once again reeling from an increase in Taliban ...
'We aim to empower women, promote education with an emphasis on girls, and stop corruption and domestic violence. But since the administration is against the poor people of our country, we often end up taking matters into our own hands. We first speak to...
The gunmen, nearly a dozen of them, some in black commando fatigues and bandannas, others in ordinary clothes, came in the early hours of the morning. They opened fire while the villagers of Jorai were still sleeping. Pabitra Lankhasa, 50, remembers ...
As the wild broke loose in an untamed spread of ruin, people fled - some cried, others choked in horror; some scampered in hope, while others crawled for mercy; scavenging for the last scraps of memory, in little pieces of frayed curio; united in ...
India's farmers, mostly poor, malnourished and illiterate, have suddenly found themselves in possession of the country's scarcest resource: land. In Orissa, 14 different industrial projects, valued at well over $35 billion, have hiccupped and then ...
On 20 July 2011, the United Nations officially declared famine in parts of Southern Somalia and extended the geographical reach of the famine to much of Somalia over the coming weeks. The poor harvest and continuing instability in the country, which ...
Until the early 1970s, the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan existed in a state of total isolation, shunning television and tourism in an attempt to preserve its unique cultural identity. From 1974 onwards, King Jigme Singye Wangchuk decided to allow a ...
Every summer several hundred thousand devout Hindus from across India arrive in the mountainous and disputed territory of Kashmir, to take part in an arduous pilgrimage to a revered mountain shrine: the Amarnath Cave. 2011 saw a record number of ...
Paradise lost: Persia from above is a unique photographic record of a fascinating land. Georg Gerster, a pioneer of aerial photography, was granted unprecedented permission to record the landscapes and cities of Persia in the late 1970s. This is an ...
Five years after the Orange Revolution promised to transform Ukraine, excitement has given way to fatigue. The economy shrank by 15% in 2009, and the country lies 17th from bottom in the global index of economic freedom. The first round of the 2010 ...
50 years after Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev's now famous 'secret speech' denouncing the crimes of Josef Stalin, an official museum dedicated to the Soviet dictator opened its doors in Volgograd, formerly known as Stalingrad, in 2006. Initiated by...
Malaria takes its name from the Italian and means literally 'bad air'. For a long time the Romans believed that the fever was caused by the putrid air of marshlands, not knowing that the real cause is the Anopheles mosquito which thrives in such areas. ...
I arrived in Haiti ten days after the apocalyptic earthquake of January 12th. The world had been watching in disbelief horrific images of mountains of bodies burning in the streets or thrown in mass graves. When I arrived in the country there were ...
A bloody uprising in Kyrgyzstan in April 2010 saw the country's president flee the capital. Opposition leader Roza Otunbayeva claimed to have taken control, stating 'You can call this revolution. You can call this a people's revolt. Either way, it is our...
On the 12th of June 2010, the city of Osh exploded in violence. Clashes occurred between the two main ethnic groups - Uzbeks and Kyrgyz - in southern Kyrgyzstan. As a result, up to 2,000 people were killed and more than 400,000 displaced, and many ...
Tuberculosis remains a serious threat to public health in Kyrgyzstan, and the country's prisons are a primary breeding ground for the disease. The incidence of TB in Kyrgyz jails is about 25 times higher than in the general population, and the rate ...
Though the subject matter is somewhat out of his usual realm of experience, William Daniels thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of finding an innovative approach to the unfamiliar world of "haute couture" As he remembers about his week with some of ...
From 11 until 15 April 2011, William Daniels' striking photographic study of the scourge of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in countries across Africa and Asia, will be exhibited in a central location in the middle of the European Parliament in ...
The uprising against Muammar Gaddafi's 40-year rule which started in February 2011 in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi has pulled the entire country into all-out civil war. The violence between rebel forces and those loyal to Gaddafi's teetering ...
When news started to filter through that rebel forces were poised to enter the capital Tripoli, William Daniels felt compelled to make his way back to Libya where he had covered the fighting and the humanitarian crisis earlier in the year. Once back ...
What has become known as the Occupy movement in the English-speaking world, or Indignados and Indignés in Spain and France respectively, is a loose network of separate protests or protest movements in over 80 countries that broadly question ...
In 1982, the Syrian city of Hama rose up against the autocratic regime of Hafez al Assad, the current Syrian president's father, and became a symbol of the brutal length to which Syria's rulers were prepared to go to remain in power. At the time, ...
The Central African Republic (CAR) has seen more than its fair share of coups and unrest over the five and a half decades since its independence from France. The current crisis, however, triggered by yet another coup d'etat, is starting to pit a well...
The Central African Republic (CAR) has seen more than its fair share of coups and unrest over the five and a half decades since its independence from France. The current crisis, however, triggered by yet another coup d'etat, has turned into an ...
Even though the warring factions in the Central African Republic's latest bout of instability gathered in Brazzaville, Congo, on 23 July to sign a truce, flashes of violence continue to plague this mineral-rich country of 4.5 million which has been ...
It was grand and extravagant, utterly outlandish, and the most expensive infrastructure project of the Soviet era. The BAM, the Baikal-Amur Mainline, is the railway crossing Eastern Russia, running for over 4000 kilometres. Along the way, small ...
At 4am against a starry sky, the bats return from their nightly forage and hang by their millions from the skeletal trees of the mushitu swamp forest.Kasanka National Park covers a mere 390 square kilometres of land in north eastern Zambia, but it has ...