Pictures of the Year International
Sponsored by
Prev
Photographer of the Year, International:…
Next

Photographer of the Year, International: Mads Nissen

This premier category is open to all photographers — independent, agency, wire service, or newspaper photographers.

The work should be of primary interest to a nation or the world, usually created with the intent to share nationally or internationally. Newspaper photographers who cover national or international stories should enter portfolios in this category.

Caption
Slide 1 of 47
March 6, 2022
Mads Nissen / Politeken / Panos Pictures

    Ukraine is Bleeding

    When Ukraine was invaded on the morning of 24 February 2022 the Russians expected a swift victory. After months of intense fighting across the country's vast territory, on the streets of its cities and across the flat plains of the countryside, casualties are mounting on both sides and the two countries have settled into a grinding war with no end in sight. To this day more than 14 million Ukrainians have left their homes. According to the UN, 7.000 civilians have already lost their lives. The casualties among the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are many times higher, probably between 170-130,000, but like everything else the numbers are disputed. Only undisputed fact is that the war has been fierce and bloody. And that no one intent to give up soon.

    Inside Taliban’s Drug-Prison

    The production and export of opium and heroin are the main source of income for the new Taliban regime, despite the condemnation of drug trafficking by their religious leader. Afghanistan now produces 90% of the world’s heroin, but the illegal drugs do not only harm addicts in Iran, Europe and the US. No one suffers more than the Afghans themselves. One million Afghans are addicted to the drugs. Of a population of only 35 million. The reasons behind the devastating numbers are many. It might dull the traumas after years of war and violence, but for many the drugs are actually introduced to them by their own employees who offers a quick relief from hunger, pain and exhaustion. After a short while there are hooked. Despite the Taliban’s own economic dependence of the drugs, they are also trying to crack down on the obviously presence in the streets. People with addictions are caught at gunpoint and forced into forced rehabilitation in drug-prisons such as the ‘Ibn Sina Drug Addiction Treatment Hospital’ in Kabul. Here thousands of drug abusers are living under sub-human conditions surviving on one meal a day, sleeping for months with lice and scabies, until they might be declared for cured and released again.

    Sangre Blanca - The Lost War on Cocaine

    We are in the golden age of cocaine. Consumption and production have never been higher. Despite more than 40-years of ‘War on Drugs’ – the coca leaf still flourishes on the hills of Colombia. For many Europeans and Americans, cocaine is a party drug. For many Colombians, cocaine is blood and violence, corruption and death. This reportage delves into the murky depths of the cocaine trade and exposes some of the human consequences in Colombia of the world’s favorite party drug. Illegal drugs now constitute the world's largest illegal economy, and in its wake follow corruption, underdevelopment, and extremely high murder rates in South and Central America in particular. Entire societies and nations are destabilized. Regardless of years of war and endless efforts to stop cocaine Colombia remains in the heart of the business. No place produces more. No place suffers more. But never have the production been higher. The international response has so far been a mixture of prohibition, hard punishment and bloody military campaigns that are raging across Colombia’s countryside. This has been the strategy since the 1970s - but is it working? And from whose perspective? And what is the human consequences behind the world’s insatiable appetite for cocaine?

    The Price of Peace in Afghanistan

    The chaotic withdrawal of US and allied forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 spelled the end of a hugely expensive, ultimately futile 20 year-long attempt at nation building following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The Taliban forces, having sustained a low-level insurgency across the country for two decades, once in charge of Kabul were quickly deprived of the two main sources of government income - foreign aid and billions of dollars of government reserves deposited abroad which were promptly frozen. Since then the already fragile economy, reliant on foreign aid to cover three quarters of its budget, has largely collapsed. Half of the country's 40 million people don't have enough to eat and over a million children are severely malnourished and at risk of starvation.

    87d08895-64f8-4783-a11c-aee620547b36
    6a0c67ea-a657-478f-ab28-11252d1483f7
    5aadb3cc-1496-4f7b-9b1d-9d06cc06e323
    31f40733-10e6-44c4-a9f3-59f92ce45b70
    3113c73d-d952-4c51-a3b8-aa4a3c824ce0
    47230c0b-69f7-409d-b453-8f7b6d6df901
    06350f99-bd92-49d9-8825-d6be89f204c6
    7af134e4-5d33-453b-aaae-b8d7fb7e3454
    74288782-65a1-4ffc-ad3d-bb0efa880393
    d38db283-eadc-4a0d-97ec-8837e1d09db8