Afghan photographer Fatimah Hossaini, who has until now covered Afghanistan and Iran for Outriders, captured with her camera her last days in the country since the Taliban seized Kabul and she managed to flee.

A little more than a year ago, an unknown Sviatlana, the wife of Homel blogger Siarhiej Cichanoŭski, who was then serving an administrative arrest, submitted documents to the Central Election Commission for the registration of her initiative group for the presidential elections of the Republic of Belarus. During registration, in response to a question from the CEC chairman Lidzija Jarmošyna about Sviatlana’s intentions to conduct an active campaign, she ironically replied, “I’ve been dreaming about this all my life.” Against the background of the non-registration of other main candidates, the opposition headquarters united and came out in support of Sviatlana Cichanoŭskaja.

In the 19th century, the British brought the so called ‘sodomy law’ to all its colonies. 161 years later, LGBTIQ+ community in some 30 countries still fights to Repeal It.

At least 2,456 elephants died in Sri Lanka in a decade (2008-2018). It means that one elephant a day dies in Sri Lanka from causes related to human activity. 2019 was the deadliest year, with 407 elephants killed, according to the Department of Wildlife Conservation in Sri Lanka . In 2020, despite the pandemic lockdown, 318 elephants and 112 people were killed on the island. Sri Lanka is considered the country with the world’s deadliest human-elephant conflict.

Faced by a complex intermarriage between land degradation and climate change, the Samburu of northern Kenya have to contend with rangelands that are increasingly unproductive and more frequent droughts.

In 1986, Sayeed Rohullah Khomeini, Iran’s first supreme leader, issued a fatwa, a religious edict, allowing a transgender woman, Mariam Khatoon Malek Araa, to have the first legally-sanctioned sex reassignment surgery (SRS) in the Islamic Republic.
Though Khomeini’s edict has allowed for hundreds of transgender people to undergo SRS at relatively low costs, the overall situation for transgender people in Iran has not seen much improvement over the last 35 years.