In developing countries, diseases linked to pregnancy and delivery are the second cause of mortality (after HIV) for adult women. 99% of women’s deaths linked to delivery live in developing countries: maternal health is one of the fields in which the gap between rich and poor is the widest. When it doesn’t lead to the mother’s death, lack of care during pregnancy and delivery often affects the child: in the world, each year, 8 million children are born with congenital malformation, 95% of them in developing countries. According to the WHO, 70% of these malformations could be avoided or cured. Vietnam is one of the 10 countries in the world that achieved the Millennium Development...

The war between the Ugandan Army and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has been waged for more than twenty years. It has been described as the world's worst forgotten humanitarian crisis and is now before the International Criminal Court for LRA massacres of civilians. My name is Filda Adoch reports on the everyday life of a woman in the Gulu district, and shows the suffering the people of North Uganda. It is also the story of silent and extraordinary resistance. Canon Female Photojournalist Award Presented by the French Association of Female Journalists (AFJ)

In the Buterere district of Bujumbura, children survive by rummaging through garbage to find food and bits and pieces they can sell in order to help support their family. Because it is less populated than other places, Buterere has been - for a very long time - used as a dumping ground by the surrounding villages. With no real waste management program, locals have been throwing their rubbish here. And nowadays, the poorest inhabitants survive thanks to this rubbish dump. Other kids, most of them no older than 10, work in the local brickyards. They can work up to 12 hours a day and will be paid 1500 Burundian Francs (1,2 $). But really, they all - Emelyne, Jadine, Tama or Audrick...

Every minute in the world a woman dies of childbirth. 99% of these women live in developing countries. More than half of them live in sub-Saharan Africa. For every maternal death, 20 women suffer pregnancy-related injuries, infections or diseases and, in some case, long term disabilities. The majority of maternal deaths and disabilities can be prevented through access to basic health-care services during pregnancy and delivery. The more affected are women living in poverty, who lack the decision-making power and the financial resources to access basic health care. The lack of progress in reducing maternal mortality highlights the low price placed on the lives of these women and...

“On the 06th of August 2011, Islamist militia Al-Shabaab retreat Mogadishu, living a city wounded by two decades of civil war. Inhabitants who are still scared by snipers desert several districts. And IDP camps, where hundred of people get to every day in order to avoid the starvation which lay the country waste, are spread out in the whole city. TGF forces (Transitional Government), which had to protect the population, are sometimes responsible of serious breakings of human rights in the IDP camps, and AMISON (African Union peace forces) can’t face the country’s issues. People are trapped between an incompetent power and an armed group which block the humanitarian aid necessary to...

They are young, they are women, and these are the reasons why they have all, in a way or another, been submitted to violence from their village or close relations. “In Burundi, a woman has to suffer where she settled,” Venerande Namaganda says. This young Burundian had to undergo deception and theft from the people she was working with. Like her, a lot of women in Burundi are tied up to their husbands or their village because they have no job and are completely dependents. The Ishaka project offers micro credit to these women, so that they do not have to stay with a husband or a family who mistreat them. With Ishaka, they realize that they do not need men to earn money. Arlette...

Mother and daughter, two Burundian women face disability together. In Bujumbura, capital of Burundi, everyday is a struggle for Francine. After her husband died, her brother-in-law punished her by the most dreadful and indelible way, cutting her two forearms. Now deeply disabled, she needs assistance for each of everyday life’s tasks ; necessary activities such as feeding and washing herself became difficult. This tragic event also meant the loss of her autonomy. This Burundian woman lives away from her young daughter Bella, who studies in the South of the country, far from the capital. They sometimes meet during holidays and take care of each other. With a generous look, full of...

Causes of disability in the world are numerous and often linked to extreme poverty. To war casualties like people with amputations, one must add leprosy, poliomyelitis and diabetes. Pregnancy and delivery conditions increase the risk of child mortality. AIDS and car accidents add to the list. According to W.H.O., around 10 per cent of the world's population, or 650 million people, live with a disability, 80% of them in developing countries. In their own society, they are invisible citizens. Living their life hidden, cloistered, millions of disabled people don't get their basic human rights respected. Disability and poverty increase each other. To break this vicious circle,...

According to a study mentioned by the National Program for Reproductive Health and the United Nations Population Fund in 2005, an estimated 1000 new cases of obstetric fistula are reported annually in Burundi, averaging three instances for every 1000 births in this African nation. The obstetric fistula is a lesion responsible for the permanent and uncontrollable flow of urine or the excretion of fecal matter from the vagina. It is often a complication from a long and difficult childbirth with a prolonged blockage of the the fetal head in the lower genital tract. It is more common in cases of unassisted labor. More than 80 % of women with fistula are thrown out by their husbands. The...

The days of work with dancer and choreographer Virgilio Sieni and the children have been inspired, unconsciously, by the idea of “trace”. The dance – as Virgilio says – the movement through which we escape daily life - a series of superfluous movements, which don’t follow a “utility” but translate an inner feeling. We visited many places and at the end the place was one, the inner one. It has been a pleasure to work with Virgilio and the children. There has never been a choreography nor a script. There have been suggestions, ideas, reactions. There have been giggles and questions. Then we would all go behind the camera and watch the children react freely to what was around...

On April 2009 the Burudian Government signed into law a new criminal code that contains a provision making sexual relations between people of the same sex illegal for the first time in the country history. Those pictures were taken during the interviews carried out by Human Right Watch with the members of Burundi’s LGBT community. They told us stories of being beaten by parents, chased out of their family homes, threatened by police officers, silenced in school, and subjected to sexual violence. The abuses and discrimination they endured, for which they felt they had no protection from state, made them second-class citizens in Burundi long before the passage of this law.

The perception of the self and of things around is for blind people very physical. In the process of recognition sight doesn’t participate and the other senses re-born. Hands are eyes. Surfaces, odours, sounds, are colours. In a time where the perception of the human being is mostly aesthetical I go to the places where the self evolves and grows in its inside and in the tactile experience of the other. Pianissimo is an inward journey. Because it’s world far from noise and external things, and because I have tried to approach without invading, but silently partaking. Pianissimo, in fact.