Gisele Marie, a Muslim woman and professional heavy metal musician, holds her Gibson Flying V electric guitar as walks down stairs at the end of a fund raising concert for the Syrian refugees in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro November 8, 2015. Based in Sao Paulo, Marie, 42, is the granddaughter of German Catholics, and converted to Islam several months after her father passed away in 2009. Marie, who wears the burka, has been fronting her brothers' heavy metal band "Spectrus" since 2012. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

From house breaking in Johannesburg to hippos on the loose in Tbilisi to rioters attacking a policewoman in Burundi, Reuters photographers tell the story behind some of the most iconic pictures of the year. Here: Protesters drag a female police officer accused of shooting a protester in the Buterere neighbourhood of Bujumbura, Burundi, May 12, 2015. Goran Tomasevic: Protesters started throwing stones at a group of police, who then started to run away. The policewoman in the photo, Medikintos Inabeza, 33, got left behind and then some protesters started to push her, saying that she had shot a female protestor in the stomach with an AK47 rifle. I didn't see anything of that. There were 5 or 10 protesters pushing the policewoman at first, then others came and joined in. Up to 20 or 30 protesters were surrounding her at one point. The protesters kicked and beat her very badly; I also saw a couple of knives. I thought they were going to kill her... (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

Yan Anyu or Miss Cream rides in a taxi in Shanghai on June 13, 2020, as she makes her way to a bar in the city of Shanghai to make her first presentation as a drag queen. Attitudes toward alternative lifestyles are slowly softening in China, and members of a small but growing drag community have begun to step into the spotlight. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP Photo)

Alexandra Mazo, 12, with her cellphone on her way down the mountain after finishing school. The remote mountain village of Pueblo Nuevo has been highly affected by the armed conflict and direct combat between the national army and Farc guerrillas due to its strategic location and the intensive production on coca crops on the surrounding hillsides. (Photo by Mads Nissen/Politiken/The Guardian/Panos Pictures/The Nobel Peace Center)

Alina Serban (L) poses during a photo session for the poster of her show in Bucharest on October 20, 2021. Roma actress and playwright Alina Serban grew up watching TV and going to the theatre without any stories “with or about people like us” – something she set out to change, becoming the first to have her work on the stage of Bucharest's National Theatre. (Photo by Bogdan Dinca/AFP Photo)

A young girl from the Makonde ethnic group wearing earth makeup on her facen, a beauty symbol, carries a baby on her back as she poses for pictures in the community of Marupa, a relocation center for internally displaced families in the Chiure district, on February 23, 2021. Thousands of families from different districts of the Cabo Delgado province who have been displaced have been located by the government in different areas of the province. (Photo by Alfredo Zuniga/AFP Photo)

A woman talks on her cellphone as she walks around Tajrish commercial district without wearing the mandatory Islamic headscarf in northern Tehran, Iran, Saturday, April 29, 2023. More women are choosing not to wear the mandatory headscarf, or the hijab, publicly in Iran. Such open defiance of the law follows months of protests over the September death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the country's morality police, for wearing her hijab too loosely. (Photo by Vahid Salemi/AP Photo)

Vanessa, thirty-five, had three children with an abusive husband. She “lost her mind, started doing heroin”, after losing the children, who were taken away and given to her mother. The drugs led to homelessness and prostitution. She grew up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, but now spends her time in Hunts Point, “trying to survive everyday. Just doing whatever it takes”.