Juliet Samaniya, 6, carries a bag of lithium with other children at an illegal mining site in Paseli, Nigeria, November 5, 2024. (Photo by Sunday Alamba/AP Photo)





A boy carries an unexploded Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) at the site of the previous evening's Israeli airstrike that targeted shipments of weapons that belonged to Syrian government forces in Qamishli, in mainly Kurdish northeastern Syria, on December 10, 2024. The UN special envoy for Syria called on Israel on December 10 to halt its military movements and bombardments in Syria, after a war monitor reported 300 air strikes since the fall of president Bashar al-Assad. (Photo by Delil Souleiman/AFP Photo)





A wounded girl sits on a stretcher at the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 12 December 2024. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, at least 25 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza Strip. More than 45,000 Palestinians and over 1,400 Israelis have been killed, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry and the Israeli Army, since Hamas militants launched an attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip on 07 October 2023, and the Israeli operations in Gaza and the West Bank which followed it. (Photo by Mohammed Saber/EPA/EFE)





A girl jumps off a toppled statue of former president Hafez al-Assad as people gather on a street in Sweida on December 13, 2024, to celebrate the collapse of his son Bashar al-Assad's rule. Islamist-led rebels took Damascus in a lightning offensive on December 8, ousting president Bashar al-Assad and ending five decades of Baath rule in Syria. (Photo by Louai Beshara/AFP Photo)





Sierra Leonean migrant worker Isatta Bah, 24, smiles as she holds her daughter, Blessing, one year old, during an interview with The Associated Press while waiting to be repatriated back home, as they are sheltered at a former car dealership in Hazmieh, east of Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, December 4, 2024. (Photo by Hassan Ammar/AP Photo)





Participants wearing Santa Claus-themed outfits take part in a charity run, in Pristina, Kosovo on December 15, 2024. (Photo by Valdrin Xhemaj/Reuters)





Palestinian girls in traditional clothes attend the opening of the “Life USA School”, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, affiliated with the Palestinian ministry of education and funded by the Life For Relief and Development Foundation, on December 11, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants. (Photo by Bashar Taleb/AFP Photo)





Children from St. Joseph's nursery sing alongside Lucan Gospel Choir at a live animal Christmas nativity crib, in Dublin, Ireland, on December 11, 2024. (Photo by Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)





Ripon Cathedral’s choristers wore festive hats for a carol concert with the St Cecilia Orchestra on Sunday, December 15, 2024. (Photo by Times photographer James Glossop)





A child looks at light installations while being carried on an adult's shoulders at a Christmas fair in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, December 14, 2024. (Photo by Andreea Alexandru/AP Photo)





Three children receive ‘best Christmas present ever’ bionic arms in Bristol, England in the second decade of December 2024. Colette Baker, Finley Jarvis and Zoey Pidgeon-Hampton with their new Open Bionics arms. (Photo by Tom Wren/SWNS)





People dressed as comic book superheros pose with children as they distribute gifts at Pristina Children's Hospital during an event organized by the Kosovo Alpin Club and “Care for Kosovo Kids”, a Dutch organization that provides life-saving medicines for children battling cancer in Kosovo, on December 13, 2024. (Photo by Armend Nimani/AFP Photo)





A toddler sleeps while people wait to cross into Lebanon from Syria, at the Masnaa border crossing, Syria on December 12, 2024. (Photo by Amr Alfiky/Reuters)





Members of Plast, the Ukraine national scout organization, take part in the ceremony of transferring the Peace Light of Bethlehem at the central railway station in Kyiv, Ukraine, 15 December 2024. The Peace Light of Bethlehem is a program that began in Austria in 1986. It has spread to more than 20 countries in Europe and the Americas. Each year before Christmas, the flame originates in the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem and is carried through the various countries by the scout movement. (Photo by Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA/EFE)





A destroyed Syrian army checkpoint on a road between Damascus, Syria’s capital, and the Lebanese border on December 9, 2024. (Photo by Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post)