UNICEF Deutschland: Antonio Aragón Renuncio: Photo of the Year 2018

Antonio Aragón Renuncio

Each year the German UNICEF Committee (UNICEF Deutschland) asks an independent jury to select the UNICEF Photo of the Year.   This is the 2018 winner.  What might be the 2019 winner?

"They are seen as a “punishment from the gods”, sometimes even as “demons”. Or simply as “snakes”. The less people know about diseases, the more they are frightened by them. This is especially true when it comes to disabilities. As a result, horrible myths are widespread in parts of West Africa about children with mental and physical disabilities. They are at risk of isolation; they are often mistreated and shunned by their families.

This is still the case, for example, in some regions of Togo. The country only ranks 165th out of 189 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI) 2018 of the United Nations Development Programme. Therefore, it is almost like a life-raft for disabled children that there is now the “Saint Louis Orione Center” in Bombouaka, named after an Italian priest who died in 1940 and started helping orphans in 1908. About 70 boys and girls have found a safe home there and receive the medical care they need. They have the opportunity to play and are no longer seen as inferior.

One of these children: the boy with leg orthosis, photographed by Antonio Aragón Renuncio, a Spanish photographer living in Nicaragua, during one of his regular visits to the Center. The main reasons for disabilities in third-world countries include malnutrition, insufficient obstetrics and lack of vaccination, for example against polio. More than 93 million children around the world grow up with moderate and severe disabilities. “These children need to be seen, so that they, too, can be valued”, demands UNICEF. Renuncio has taken that to heart." 

See this and other winning photos of children at:   https://www.unicef.de/informieren/aktuelles/photo-of-the-year/contest-2018