Dr. Sayed Abdul Qreshi’s relaxed manner belies the monumental nature of his challenge.  Perhaps he could be described as having fatalistic resignation.  Forty thousand to fifty thousand Kabulis, are opium or heroin users in a city of nearly 3 million, says this deputy director of the capital’s only government-run hospital for drug rehabilitation and psychiatry.  He has 20 beds in total available for his drug detoxification program. As for the psychiatric wing, there are just 40 beds, 20 for women and the same number for men.

AFGHANISTAN| THE DARKENED DEN
- all images and text are copyrighted to photographer James  Whitlow  Delano

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Die Vier Hoeke is prison-gang terminology that refers to the inside of South African prisons. It translates directly to The Four Corners. South African prisons have been brutal instruments of racism and oppression under colonialism and the Apartheid regime, incarcerating many of our political leaders. Prisons are thus firmly rooted in the consciousness of this country and continue be a central experience in the lives of many.

SOUTH AFRICA| DIE VIER HOEKE
- all images and text are copyrighted to photographer Mikhael Subotzky

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In the past decades, hundreds of thousands of Chinese from the provinces have descended upon Beijing in hopes of attracting attention from higher authorities regarding their civil law cases. These cases range between work accidents, violence against family members, murder and extortion, the majority of which stem from a corrupt rural legal system.

CHINA| BLOOD AND TEARS
- all images and text are copyrighted to photographer Katharina Hesse

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Discrimination is an act of depriving individuals of their fundamental human rights and treating them unjustly in any aspect of their lives, be it political, economic or cultural. In Japan, Buraku discrimination happens against people who were born or live in the Hisabetsu Buraku (discriminated districts).

JAPAN PEOPLE LIVING IN THE HISABETSU BURAKU| PORTRAITS ON THE OTHER SHORE
- all images and text are copyrighted to photographer Masaru Goto

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A few days before Cyclone Sidr ravaged Bangladesh, the people of the coastal region found themselves rushing into shelters, having been warned of an incoming tsunami. That, however, proved to be a “false dawn” as the gigantic waves left almost no damage. So when the warnings came on November 15, disastrously, many people chose to neglect them rather than rush immediately to the safety of the shelters. A few managed to reach these safe havens, but some who wanted to never made it. Even those who made it to the shelters lost almost everything – family, friends, their homes, their land and even their livestock. Perhaps the latter three could be replaced, but no amount of relief will ever make up for lost friends and family.

BANGLADESH AFTER THE CYCLONE| ONLY TEARS REMAIN
- all images and text are copyrighted to photographer Munem Wasif
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These photographs are an excerpt from the book “Afghanistan: Broken Promise,” published by Edizioni Charta, Italy, in the fall of 2007.
This body of work represents a personal journey through Afghanistan that started in 2001 shortly after the attacks of September 11. Afghanistan remains a country scarred by decades of conflict. With these photographs I aim to document the daily life struggles that Afghans endure as they work toward a peaceful and prosperous future in the aftermath of the fall of the Taliban and the American invasion.

AFGHANISTAN|BROKEN PROMISE
- all images and text are copyrighted to photographer Moises Saman
HIS BOOK "BROKEN PROMISE" IS NOW AVAILABLE!

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In the 1980s, among the ranks of the guerrilla fighters of the PKK or Kurdistan Workers Party, there were reportedly a dozen women fighting. While figures are inexact, one commander told us as many as 10,000 PKK soldiers are amassing in mountain camps just across the Iraqi border, risking their lives in daily spats with the Turkish army – the military representatives of a government they accuse of unmerciful human rights atrocities and the suppression of a nation of 14 million people. However, what is not widely reported is that a third of these Kurdish combatants are women – a phenomenon perhaps without precedent.

KURDISTAN, NORTHERN IRAQ|NO FRIENDS BUT TH MOUNTAINS
- all images and text are copyrighted to photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind and writer Katie Scott

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In Afghanistan, an astonishing number of women―25,000―die from obstetric causes each year. One woman dies every 27 minutes. Afghanistan has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world, after only Sierra Leone.
The national maternal mortality ratio (MMR) in Afghanistan was 1,900 per 100,000 live births, according to a 2000 UN report, compared with 17 in the United States. Furthermore, Ragh district in Badakshan province in Afghanistan has the highest MMR recorded in human history: 6,500.

AFGANISTAN|WHERE WOMEN DIE GIVING BIRTH - all images and text are copyrighted to Jean Chung
issued date 9.25.07
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Each year, almost 125,000 people are released from California State prisons. In 2006 close to 12,000 women were serving time in California State prisons. Two-thirds were serving time for a non-violent offense. Over 13,000 women were on parole in California in 2006. More than half of them will eventually return to prison.

AMERICA|ROAD TO RE-ENTRY - all images and text are copyrighted to Greg Constantine
issued date 8.25.07
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Twenty-one years after the worst nuclear accident in history, the Chernobyl area tries to survive. For the world, the accident, remains in everyone’s memory. For Chernobyl, everyone tries to survive in the memory of life before.

CHERNOBYL|LIFE IN NO-MAN'S LAND
all images and text are copyrighted to Lourdes Segade
issued date 7.25.07
sign up free>>>		 Human Rights Watch states that as many as 10,000 Burmese migrants are expelled from Thailand each month in “informal deportations”. Rounded up and packed into cattle trucks, they are driven straight back into the hands of the regime they have fled. Fleeing considered an act of treason, the deportees often face imprisonment or execution on return.

Burma|ON THE BORDER
all images and text are copyrighted to Jack Picone
issued date 6.25.07
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 The destruction of villages, surrounding the mines, by the hungry earth eaters, has devastated the local social fabric. Many people losing contact with their relatives – with those who have money, moving to other areas so as not to sacrifice their children’s health. And, where there were once villages and farms, now huge open cast mines reside, their machines belching out smoke and dust throughout the day, and into the night – Ptolemaida’s inhabitants and land now reigned by desperation and desolation.
Greece|BLACK DUST
all images and text are copyrighted to EKTOR DIMISIANOS
issued date 5.25.07
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Lack of food drives North Koreans to cross the border to China. In a hermetically enclosed country, education is intended to instill the belief that North Korea is better off than the rest of the world. It is only upon arrival in China that the North Korean illegal migrants become aware, via observation of the comparatively prosperous Chinese lifestyle and Korean satellite television, that they may be better off not returning to their homeland. And, so, like others before them, they become refugees.
CHINA|Path to Uncertainty
all images and text are copyrighted to Katharina Hesse
issued date 4.25.07
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“So he with difficulty and labour hard moved on, with difficulty and labour he.”
Milton’s words appear to be written of the largely Muslim and Christian inhabitants of Vizhinjam, in Kerala*, India.

 INDIA|Paradise Lost latitudes north 8° 18’ / 12° 48’ and longitudes east 74° 52’ / 72° 22’
all images and text are copyrighted to Keith Judd
issued date 3.25.07
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In a room of the apartment, a young man was stuffing heroin into a latex capsule, swallowing it - “I’m scared.  But, I need the money.”


COLOMBIA|swallowing a drug quagmire
all images and text are copyrighted to kosuke okahara
issued date 2.25.07
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Sprawling green hills, petit women in colourful saris, picking tea leaves and throwing them into the tukri on their back ― the image we are shown. A picture perfect tale of harmony and prosperity, as portrayed by the many tea companies, is what belies modern day slavery.

BANGLADESH|Tainted Tea
all images and text are copyrighted to Munem Wasif and Mahfuz Sadique
issued date 1.25.07
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