In this photograph taken on March 20, 2017, Afghan widows and residents walk to the home of Anissa Azimi, 38, the daughter of the founder of the ‘Widows Hill’, Bibikoh, in Zanabad on the outskirts of Kabul.

The first women settled on this stony slope outside Kabul in the 1990s hoping to escape the stigma those like them are forced to endure.

Today it is known as Afghanistan’s ‘hill of widows’, home to a cluster of women who have eked out independence in a society that shuns and condemns them as immoral.

Fifteen Afghan girls founded the “Migratory Birds” — a newspaper made by refugees for refugees. For the young authors, reporting about their own lives is an act of self-empowerment.

From painful gyneaological procedures to abusive comments from medical staff, a tide of #MeToo testimonies from womens’ traumatic hospital experiences are rippling across the Balkans.

A tide of #MeToo testimonies about painful gynaecological procedures and abusive medical staff is rippling across the Balkans, where women are breaking taboos in patriarchal societies to share their traumatic hospital experiences.

A picture book for children which highlights the issue of land rights of farmers and indigenous people in India.

Deadly disputes over land and indigenous rights are not obvious themes for children’s books, but Indian writers are using real-life conflicts to help the next generation understand their impact on communities across the country.

Sophia Flörsch’s shocking crash in November captured headlines and highlighted the role of women in motorsport. DW takes a look at women who have made an impact.

London, United Kingdom. Meghan Markle, The Duchess of Sussex , at the Hubb Community Kitchen in London, to see how the funds raised by the Together: Our Community Cookbook are already making a difference to the community effected by the Grenfell Tower fire. (21/11/2018)

Stars from Buckingham Palace to Bollywood used their fame in 2018 to highlight global challenges from climate change to women’s rights.

A surrogate mother in Cambodia, pictured at five months pregnant in 2016.

Pregnant and scared, Yin hides in a house on the outskirts of Phnom Penh — one of an untold number of Cambodian surrogate mothers risking jail time for lucrative payouts from Chinese clients.

The end of China’s one-child policy has driven desperate couples too old to bring a baby to term to poorer countries in the Mekong region, where a “womb-for-rent” industry is brushing up against legal barriers. Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy in 2016 but still has brokers — and eligible young women — skirting the ban for a price.