Regional World Press Photo 2023 winners

Aiming to better represent issues affecting different regions of the world, the World Press Photo contest has added six new regional categories. The global winners will be announced on April 20. In a year marked by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many photos deal with the situation there. This image shows a woman crying over the body of her father, killed while buying bread in Kharkiv.

Ukrainian photo journalist Evgeniy Maloletka has been documenting the war in Ukraine since 2014. His "Battle for Mariupol" series shows the cruelty of the Russian war of aggression and takes a close look at the fate of those who suffer most.

Mariupol on March 9, 2022: Iryna Kalinina is evacuated from the birthing clinic that was shelled. The baby is stillborn, Iryna dies half an hour later. She named her baby Miron ("peace"). Russian media claimed the photo was fake. Not true, says the World Press Photo Foundation director. "We took a lot of time to check. These are all real photos."

Photojournalist Evgeniy Maloletka shows death and loss alongside spaces of anxiety and hope. Zhanna Goma (right) and her neighbors hunker down in a shelter in Mariupol.

In most parts of the world, this image would not seem particular, but Ahmad Halabisaz's photo shows an act of defiance: The young woman is deliberately defying Iran's mandatory headscarf law. It is one of many forms of protest following the killing of Jina Mahsa Amini in September 2022. The jury awarded this image with an honorable mention, recognizing the power of one person's protest.

The 24 winning photos show how global crises affect personal destinies. Khalil Ahmad, 15, from Afghanistan points to a scar that is so much more than a physical mark: His parents sold their son's kidney to feed their 10 children. The boy has felt no joy in life ever since. Since the collapse of the economy in Afghanistan, organ trafficking has risen dramatically.

Four Asian countries without access to the sea — Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan — fight over water distribution in times of climate crisis. Photographer Anush Babajanyan documents in her work how the fragile balance and equilibrium between the countries is increasingly becoming unbalanced.

Alpacas don't do well with rising temperatures. The series by Peruvian photographer Alessandro Cinque pinpoints the effects of climate change on animals and people — the "alpaqueros" have to move further up the mountain with their animals or find another way of life — and efforts by scientists to breed alpacas less sensitive to heat.

M'hammed Kilito's series "Before it's gone" documents life in an oasis in Morocco. The last bit of water threatens to dry up, along with the plants. The locals face poverty, and leave. Due to rising temperatures, fires and water shortages, about two-thirds of the oases in the country have vanished in recent decades.

The men in the photo are bringing water to bee colonies because the levels of the Colorado River have dropped so much. Heat and droughts weaken bees that are key to pollinating flowers. Between 2019 and 2020, bee colonies in the US saw a dramatic 43.7% decline.

Here's a positive story, says World Press Photo director Joumana El Zein Khoury, referring to the winning photo series depicting Argentina's World Cup title. In addition to historical events, it was important to the jury to cover different topics. Many of the projects honored aim to show solutions and constructive approaches.