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 ...