“When I was 8 years old, my parents paid a smuggler to take me across the Himalayas, a weekslong walk over the mountains from Tibet to India. It was a trek that tens of thousands of other Tibetans have taken since the Dalai Lama fled a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. My parents must have had their reasons to send me here; they must have had the best of intentions. But 18 years later, I still don't know why they did it. They are not political people. They are small farmers who raise barley and a few yak in a rural area not far from Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. I have not seen them since I left...”. – Tsering Topgyal via The Associated Press. (Photo by Tsering Topgyal/AP Photo)

A woman walks with her baby past a PM militarized police soldier in position and aiming his rifle in Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on September 23, 2017. Although shooting was reported in the early hours of Saturday in Rocinha – for the seventh day running – officials said that Friday's deployment of 950 soldiers to reinforce police had brought the crisis under control. (Photo by Carl De Souza/AFP Photo)

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)

A brown bear cub by the Khailyulya River in north-east Kamchatka, Russia on July 24, 2021. (Photo by Yuri Smityuk/TASS)

Pakistani children cool themselves off in a stream in Peshawar, Pakistan, Monday, June 29, 2015, during Muslim's fasting month of Ramadan. (Photo by Mohammad Sajjad/AP Photo)

General Maurice Gamelin, General Officer commanding the French Armies, is on a four day visit to England. He went to the staff college at Minley and is seen inspecting an anti-tank gun at Aldershot, on June 7, 1939. (Photo by AP Photo)

A woman holds a placard that reads, “I am Charlie”, during a vigil to pay tribute to the victims of a shooting by gunmen at the offices of weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, at Trafalgar Square in London January 7, 2015. (Photo by Stefan Wermuth/Reuters)

A woman walks on the stairs decorated with an image of two hands shaking to form the shape of the Korean Peninsula to support the upcoming inter- Korean summit, in downtown Seoul on September 17, 2018. South Korean President Moon Jae- in will fly to the North Korean capital on September 18, for his third summit with the North' s leader Kim Jong Un as a rapid diplomatic thaw takes hold on the peninsula despite stalled progress in denuclearisation talks between Pyongyang and Washington. (Photo by Jung Yeon-je/AFP Photo)