Hedayat (Afghanistan)

Four-year-old Hedayat cries in a hospital in Helmand Province. Injured in an airstrike, he wasn’t allowed to eat solid food after his surgery. The attack was meant to hit the Taliban, but instead hit Hedayat’s family. His father and one older brother were killed, 13 family members were injured.

Tahani (Yemen)

“Whenever I saw him, I hid. I hated to see him.” Tahani was six years old when she was married to her 27 year old husband. 39.000 children are getting married before the age of 18 every day.

Melania Geymonat (United Kingdom)

Melania Geymonat was traveling in a London night bus when a group of young men began harassing her and her date (who doesn’t want to be shown). The men asked them to kiss while making sexual gestures. Melania’s date acted like she was sick, but the men started to throw coins before starting to punch them, until the women started bleeding. Melania decided to leave the UK after the attack.

Vasaotse & Noriza (Madagascar)

51-year-old Vasaotse and three-year-old Noriza walked two hours to be part of the “Doctors without borders” nutrition program. Cattle rustlers and thieves burned down their house four years ago and his village doesn’t have health care, so they need to rely on traditional medicine.

74.000 children in Madagascar are currently malnourished due to a historic drought, sandstorms caused by deforestation and the economic effects of the Covid19-pandemic.

Xiao Zhen Xie (USA)

Xiao Zhen Xie, a 75 year old woman, was punched in an anti-Asian attack by a white man in San Francisco. She fought back in self-defense but was left with long-term injuries. Her grandson raised money on GoFundMe for medical treatment, but the family donated all of it to a charity fighting racism against Asian-Americans and Pacific-Islanders.

Fay Mohammad (Somalia)

Fay had to endure a Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) five days ago. They tied her legs together to stop post-bleeding. You can see on her face that she is in pain. FGM involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia for non-medical reasons. More than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 30 different countries.

Ali Shallal Al-Qaisi (Iraq)

During the early stages of the Iraq war, members of the United States Army and CIA committed a series of human right violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy and killing of another inmate.

Al-Qaisi was a prisoner, charged with a car theft crime. In the picture he was hooded and placed on a box, had cables tied to both hands and his penis that caused him cramps. He was told to be electrocuted when he would fall off the box.

Tipu Sultan (Bangladesh)

Journalist Tipu Sultan was abducted and heavily beaten with baseball bats and iron rods by about 15 thugs after producing an article accusing local legislator Hazari of criminal activity. Havari sent his private army to break Sultan’s legs and right hand to stop him from writing again. They left him on the side of the road, thinking he died, but Sultan miraculously survived.

Bangladesh is on rank 152/180 on the Press Freedom Index. The situation is seen as problematic, dozens of journalists are attacked for their work every year.