PICTURES: World Press Photo regional winners

The works invite viewers to step outside the news cycle, and look more deeply at both prominent and overlooked stories from across the world. Here we bring you a selection of some of the finalists in various regions and categories. Warning: the following photographs may be distressing Asia, Stories. An Afghan refugee near a camp by the Torkham Pakistan border crossing, 17 November 2023. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, an already war-devastated economy on the verge of collapse continues to be impacted by the withdrawal of foreign aid. A four-year drought and two major earthquakes have exacerbated the crisis. A huge number of refugees entered the border to return home before a Pakistani government deadline for those in the country illegally to leave or face deportation. Picture: Ebrahim Noroozi, Associated Press Europe, Singles. Mesut Hançer holds the hand of his 15-year-old daughter Irmak, killed when her grandmother’s home collapsed during an earthquake in Kahramanmaraş, southern Turkey, 7 February 2023, in a series killing over 55,000 people and displacing 3.3 million. Factors in the high death toll included poorly, sometimes illegally constructed buildings and the early hour of the quake, when many people were asleep. The horror of the father’s situation as he refused to leave his daughter buried under the rubble especially moved the jury. Picture: Adem Altan/AFP South America, Long-term Projects. Children wear Ngillatun masks in a Mapuche cemetery, Maihue, Los Ríos, Chile, July 2019. The local community successfully opposed building of a hydroelectric dam that would have flooded a ceremonial site. Mapuche communities are the Indigenous inhabitants of territories now part of Argentina and Chile. Their ancestral land is being commercially exploited for mining, forestry and hydroelectric projects in Chile and for fracking in Argentina. Picture: Pablo E. Piovano Southeast Asia and Oceania, Stories. Filipino fishermen dock their boats beside a government supply ship distributing oil and food, 20 September 2023. China is reinforcing its expansive claims in the South China Sea with island-building and naval patrols, raising concerns the region is becoming a flashpoint with potentially serious global consequences. Chinese maritime forces effectively occupy Scarborough Shoal, part of the Philippines’ EEZ, blocking access to fishers’ traditional fishing grounds. Picture: Michael Varcas for The Philippine Star Africa, Long-term Projects. A young man bounces off a post in a soccer field in Gafsa, a region crucial to the Tunisian economy for its phosphate mines and marked by high youth unemployment, Umm-Al-Arais, Tunisia, 17 October 2015. Tunisia’s 2011 revolution catalysed the Arab Spring and instilled hope in Tunisians, but the subsequent decade witnessed political instability, persistent economic crises and social inequality, impacting young people especially. This project explores the lives of young Tunisians. Picture: Zied Ben Romdhane, Magnum Photos, Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, AIM LAB Europe, Honourable Mentions. Satyrus effendi is a rare butterfly species named after Rustam Effendi, who collected tens of thousands of butterflies across the now contested borderlands between Armenia and Azerbaijan. His death in 1991 coincided with the start of decades of conflict in the region. Photographer Rena retraced her father’s footsteps for this project. Effendi’s friend and protégé, Parkev Kazarian, who he taught taught to collect and preserve butterflies, an ethnic Armenian refugee from Baku, Azerbaijan, in his home in a village near Gyumri, Armenia, April 2022. For more than a decade, Effendi and Kazarian went on butterfly hunting trips together. Picture: Rena Effendi, VII Photo, National Geographic Society Europe, Long-term Projects. Demonstrators evade a police blockade, then climb back onto the road to reach the railroad track along which coal travels from the Hambach open pit mine to three power plants, Bedburg, Germany, 26 August 2017. Three local mines produce 100m tons of coal annually. Human-induced climate change is the most pervasive threat to the natural environment and society the world has ever experienced, according to the OHCHR. The EU has established targets to cut greenhouse emissions by over 55% by 2030 and to net-zero by 2050. Picture: Daniel Chatard Southeast Asia and Oceania, Honourable Mentions. A resident catches fish at a once-scenic waterfall on the Cileungsi River, Curug Parigi, Indonesia, 27 August 2023. The thick foam on the water is largely a product of waste runoff from nearby industries. Industrial waste and an extended dry season have toxified the Cileungsi River, disrupting the supply of clean water for the Bekasi area. This image highlights the urgent need for environmental protection against harmful industrial practices. Picture: Arie Basuki Asia, Singles. Inas Abu Maamar, 36, cradles the body of her niece Saly, 5, who was killed, along with four other family members, when an Israeli missile struck their home, Khan Younis, Gaza, 17 October 2023. The photographer describes this photo as a ‘powerful and sad moment that sums up the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip’. By the end of 2023, Palestinian women and children accounted for more than two-thirds of the death toll in Gaza, according to OHCHR. Picture: Mohammed Salem/Reuters MORE: 24 hours in pictures, 4 April 2024

PICTURES: World Press Photo regional winners

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