Photo from Ukraine wins UNICEF’s Photo of the Year competition

The winner of the UNICEF Photo of the Year competition was the photo depicting a moment of children’s lightheartedness against the background of the consequences of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.

This is reported by Ukrinform with reference to the UNICEF website.

"The UNICEF Photo of the Year 2023 shows a moment of lightheartedness under the black clouds of war, on a meadow in northwestern Ukraine. Accompanied by friends, five-year-old Alina practices riding a bike. The night before, a drone set fire to an oil storage facility," the press release says.

It is noted that the photo by Polish photographer Patryk Jaracz symbolizes "the light of childlike resilience and joy that breaks through the darkness of global wars, conflicts and disasters."

"It is children like five-year-old Alina and her friends who give us hope and make us look to the future with optimism," said UNICEF patron Elke Büdenbender at the award ceremony in Berlin. "Surrounded by bad news, we owe it to children around the world to do everything we can to bring about good news together and to turn precarious situations into acceptable ones. So that children everywhere can grow up in peace and dignity."

The second prize went to the German photographer Oliver Weiken for his reportage on child labor. His photo shows boys in Afghanistan crawling a hundred meters or more into the Chinarak Mountains north of Kabul to mine coal. Photographer from Russia Nataliya Saprunova, who documents the transformation of childhood in Yakutia, received the third prize for her report about the children of the indigenous Evenk people.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, 120,000 Ukrainian children have been affected by war, and the number is further increasing.