UNICEF PHOTO OF THE YEAR
THE AWARD 2016
Each year, UNICEF Germany grants the “UNICEF Photo of the Year Award” to photos and photo series that best depict the personality and living conditions of children worldwide in an outstanding manner. Here are the winner 2016. Text: Peter-Matthias Gaede, UNICEF.
AREZ GHADERI, IRAN
Iran: Defending the right to smile
Smiling against all odds. A brave smile, maybe even a moment of real joy. It is the resilience, the radiance of a girl in an Iranian garbage dump which turns this photo by Arez Ghaderi, a photographer still not well known in the West, into a symbolic image: the “UNICEF Photo of the Year 2016”. An expression of a sometimes desperate hope. The hope that even the worst living conditions cannot fully destroy the vitality of children.
© Arez Ghaderi (Freelancer)
Iranian freelance photographer Arez Ghaderi met the beaming girl in a camp somewhere in the Razavi Khorasan Province. Baluchi families from the border region near Pakistan and Afghanistan migrated here in search of a new life. While the adults look for work in the nearby villages, the children stray through plastic mountains looking for things that could still be useful. They take care of their little siblings and their families’ animals. And they play. No – poverty cannot make people happy. Nowhere. But the photo taken by Arez Ghaderi reveals a fundamental children’s right: the right to sometimes simply be carefree no matter what.
© Arez Ghaderi (Freelancer)
Over the last 25 years, the country of Iran has managed to reduce child mortality from 54 to 16 deaths per thousand births. In the same period, Iran’s literacy rate has increased from 54 to 85 percent. As in other emerging countries, however, many children here have an extremely harsh childhood.
Curriculum Vitae: Arez Ghaderi (Freelancer)
© Arez Ghaderi (Freelancer)
