The ‘rainforest gardener’ of Kerala
In the thick of the monsoon this June, I found myself squinting at the smallest of orchids and rarest of impatiens (a flowering plant) inside an enclave of lush rainforest in Kerala, southern India. With Laly Joseph, 56, at the helm, dozens of women from the local neighbourhood were in charge of preserving and cultivating more than 2,000 species of native plants either ignored or forgotten by the rest of the world. Together, they are more popularly known as “rainforest gardeners”.
Joseph started working in conservation when she was 19, learning the ropes from her mentor Wolfgang Theuerkauf, a self-taught German conservationist. Her deep knowledge and excitement was palpable as she showed me around the Gurukula botanical sanctuary, explaining the intricacies of caring for numerous varieties of rare and sensitive flora needing very specific conditions to thrive and propagate.
Watching Joseph move through the nursery with a determined stride and singular purpose felt oddly comforting, even as I knew biodiversity collapse was occurring at unprecedented rates outside the confines of this secluded haven. It reminded me of the incredible power of small acts of preservation that can snowball over decades to create a forest like no other.
Neelima Vallangi
The Sudanese nurse who died defending Zamzam camp
For some, death only magnifies their courage. Hanadi Dawood, the young Sudanese nurse who stood up to her country’s genocidal paramilitaries, is among those whose legend has deepened over time, a symbol of the fortitude of Sudan’s women but also the savagery of its spiralling war.
Those fortunate to have known her describe a diminutive, grinning nurse whose enthusiasm powered the small health clinic she ran in Zamzam, a vast famine-stricken refugee camp in Darfur, at the centre of the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.
Everybody knew Hanadi. Had there been a popularity contest among the camp’s 400,000 residents, the 22-year-old would probably have won.
But it was in her last hours that Hanadi’s iconic status was forged. Surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned by the notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF) Hanadi fought off waves of attackers armed only with a knife. In between, witnesses told how she tended injured comrades on the frontline.
As the RSF advanced, footage of Hanadi urging residents to defend their camp swept across social media. The camp was where her family had fled to because of a previous genocide. It was supposed to be their sanctuary.
The footage outraged RSF’s leadership. An RSF kill squad was sent to silence her, assassinating her at close range, while elsewhere in the camp other paramilitaries executed children and raped their mothers.
Perhaps the fundamental importance of Hanadi’s heroism is that it was far from unique. Hundreds of women from Darfur have been killed this year, valiantly but vainly defending their homes and families against the hi-tech weaponry of the RSF. Their stories, largely untold, are – for now at least – represented by Hanadi.
Mark Townsend
The mother supporting others affected by state violence in Rio
What first struck me about Sonia Bonfim Vicente was her quiet resolve in the face of personal tragedy and systemic injustice.
Four years ago, her husband, William, and 17-year-old son, Samuel, were shot dead by police as they rode a motorbike through their Rio de Janeiro favela. (Samuel’s girlfriend, who they were taking to hospital, was severely injured.) In her search for answers, Vicente has met with closed doors, hostility and intimidation.
She has kept going, channelling her grief into a struggle for justice that is shared by countless other mothers in Brazil, where police kill more than 6,000 people every year and are rarely held to account. This October, Rio’s bloodiest ever police operation left about 130 dead; half were under 30.
Vicente spoke calmly as she showed me the thick file of evidence she has accumulated – along with a vast understanding of the legal system and her rights, which she now shares with other mothers. Like her, they tend to be Black women from a poor background, too often ignored by the state that killed their sons. But they are coming together with strength and dignity, sharing experiences, staging demonstrations and providing comfort to each other.
“When I’m supporting other mothers, I forget about my own case,” says Vicente. “I have to be strong.”
Constance Malleret
The ‘warrior’ midwife saving lives in Senegal
Amy Mbaye is a midwife running a health post in Joal, a fishing town a few hours’ drive south of Dakar in Senegal. I met her when I went to see the work done by an MSI Reproductive Choices outreach team, taking contraception to the women who live there.
The post building had seen better days – it was raining when we arrived and buckets were strewn across the floor to catch drips from the leaking roof.
Mbaye told me the clinic struggles for even basic resources such as disposable gloves. There is no running water in the bathroom, and power cuts are a regular fact of life.
But for thousands of local peopple it is the only healthcare facility available. The women gathered for the contraceptive clinic knew it – and Mbaye – well. She had delivered a lot of their babies.
The town is getting poorer as fishing yields dwindle, driven by the climate crisis and industrial overfishing off the coast. There is no national health service providing free treatment in Senegal, and cost is a barrier to care.
It means that sometimes when Mbaye calls a woman for a check-up she can’t afford to come. Mbaye and her colleague, a nurse, will sometimes pay out of their own salary, she said, but they can’t do that for everyone.
She knows she is not providing the gold-standard treatment she would like to, but is proud never to have lost a woman in childbirth at the clinic.
She told me the women of the town were warriors. I told her I thought she was one, too.
Kat Lay
The Gaza journalist killed by the IDF
I first interviewed Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif for a story on his colleague Fadi al-Wahidi, who had been shot in the neck by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) while reporting in northern Gaza. Sharif had been with Wahidi during the attack, and described how they had run for cover as they were relentlessly pursued and fired at.
The weight of that moment lingered with Sharif as he spoke. Yet even then, what impressed me most was his composure, his clarity and his refusal to let fear overshadow the truth.
Only later did I learn that Sharif had carried Wahidi on a stretcher from one hospital to the next due to Israel’s siege on the medical facility; details he had quietly left out. When I pressed him, he simply said he did what anyone would.
Over the following months, Sharif helped me with other stories from Gaza. He was kind, deeply knowledgable and generous with his time. We were due to speak again for a piece on how starvation was affecting Gaza journalists’ ability to work.
But that interview never happened. On 10 August 2025, Sharif was targeted and killed by the IDF while reporting from inside a press tent outside al-Shifa hospital.
Sharif knew that, far from offering protection, his press credentials endangered him. Over the past two years, Gaza has become the deadliest conflict for journalists in history. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Israel is carrying out “the most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists” ever documented.
Yet Sharif remained in Gaza, even when given the opportunity to leave, because he believed Gaza’s story needed to be told. He embodied courage and journalistic integrity in their purest form. Sharif’s death is a profound loss – for his family, for Gaza, and for anyone who still believes the truth is worth risking everything for.
Thaslima Begum
The Kenyan popstar who was outed
For more than a decade, Willis Chimano, a member of Sauti Sol, Africa’s biggest boyband, kept his sexuality a secret for fear of derailing his music career. Then, in 2018, a photograph of Chimano with his partner was posted on social media and republished by the mainstream press in Kenya. He was the first pop star in the country to be outed as gay – and social media went wild.
Kenya is one of 31 countries in Africa that still criminalises queer people. Gay sex is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Earlier this year, I met Chimano when he came to London to perform his one-man show, Heavy is the Crown. He told me about the aftermath of being outed as queer. “There was vitriol, oh my God, so much,” he said. “People were saying ‘you’re a sinner’, ‘it goes against the laws of nature’, ‘it’s against African culture’. There’s a larger society belief that what [queer people] are doing is wrong. People don’t understand.”
Since then, Chimano has been coming to terms with everything he faced. His show is full of pain and anger, but also hope. When I interviewed him, he was funny, engaging and generous; he spoke openly about what he has been through and what life is like as one of Kenya’s biggest celebrities who is also gay.
He has taken on the role of activist as well as pop star. And, he didn’t tell me this, but he’s also been a huge source of inspiration and comfort for many queer people across the continent, and their families.
Sarah Johnson
The doctor who cared for Tigray’s rape survivors
Dr Abraha Gebreegziabher still remembers the first of the girls who walked through his door. There were six of them, all under 18. All had been gang-raped by Ethiopian forces, as a bitter war transformed Tigray.
The girls were terrified: they had been told if they sought medical help, they would be killed. “Some didn’t finish basic lab tests,” he told me. “They just went out and disappeared.”
Those six were just the beginning. Abraha’s team at Ayder hospital, in the Tigray’s capital Mekelle, would go on to treat thousands, sometimes admitting more than 100 women and girls a week. The scale and intensity of sexual violence during Tigray’s conflict was extreme, with women set on fire, dismembered, and having metal objects inserted into their reproductive organs. Specialists in sexual violence whom I spoke to during our reporting often said these were the worst cases they had seen.
Abraha and his team took significant risks to provide care – continuing despite death threats, and hiding survivors of brutal sexual assaults as armed groups searched for them.
Abraha, who became Ayder’s clinical director, steered his staff through the horror, and continues to treat survivors, many of whom have catastrophic, long-term injuries. As cuts to global aid shut many clinics for Tigray’s survivors, Abraha and a team of doctors fundraised to keep their ‘one stop’ clinic open. He continues to lead a staff who are themselves traumatised – by the war itself, and the cases they treated. Many, he says, have “wounds that are not completely healed”.
Tess McClure
