Reliving the decade via pictures

From Haiti's devastating earthquake to war in Syria, here are the biggest news stories of the decade, capturing images of armed conflict, natural disasters, the plight of migrants and the drama of sport.

 

An injured child receives medical treatment after an earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 13, 2010.

More than 200,000 people were killed when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated the impoverished Caribbean country on Jan. 12, 2010. As responders dealt with the aftermath, Munoz found a young girl being treated for a head wound.

"It was hard as she was so young but the injury wasn't really bad ... She was obviously scared," Eduardo Munoz, the photographer said. "I tried to find her afterwards but it was impossible."

 

Britain's Prince William and his wife Catherine kiss on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, watched by bridesmaids Grace van Cutsem and Margarita Armstrong-Jones and pageboy Tom Pettifer, after their wedding in London April 29, 2011.

Surrounded by royal well-wishers, Martinez took the picture from the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of the palace. As the couple kissed to loud cheers, frowning bridesmaid Grace van Cutsem covered her ears, making the picture even more memorable.

"When I took that picture I didn't really notice that girl holding her ears. What I noticed was that I had this really beautiful black background," Dylan Martinez, the photographer said. "They kissed again but ... it didn't have the girl, who made that picture."

 

Syrian rebels dodge debris after the wall which they were taking cover behind is hit by a shell fired from a government-controlled checkpoint during fighting in the Ain Tarma neighbourhood of Damascus on January 30, 2013.

Tomasevic won first prize in the 2014 World Press Photo spot news stories category with pictures of rebel fighters in Syria preparing for an attack on a military post.

A rebel commander was shot by a sniper and carried away. Upon returning to the post, rebel fighters came under fire: "I followed that fight for a long time," Goran Tomasevic, the photographer said. "The wall exploded with debris everywhere."

A Syrian refugee kisses his daughter as he walks through a rainstorm towards Greece's border with Macedonia, near the Greek village of Idomeni, September 10, 2015.

Behrakis led a team documenting Middle Eastern migrants arriving in Europe in 2015, capturing images of families on boats or their first steps on foreign land. The pictures saw Reuters jointly win the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography with The New York Times.

"We showed the world what was going on, and the world cared. It showed that humanity is still alive," Yannis Behrakis, the photographer who died in March, said at the time. "We made for these unfortunate people's voice to be heard."

Usain Bolt of Jamaica looks at Andre De Grasse of Canada as they compete during the men's 100m semi-finals at the 2016 Rio Olympics, August 14, 2016.

"The semi-finals are a warm-up also for photographers," said Pfaffenbach, whose shot won the third prize for the sports singles category at the 2017 World Press Photo awards.

"I was free to play around and I thought I would try a motion blur ... I saw him running ... The moment he turned his head I thought the picture was ruined as it would be too shaky but it just happened ... and overnight it became 'the' picture", Kai Pfaffenbach, the photographer said.

A protester holds a national flag while standing in front of a fire at the entrance of a building housing the magistracy of the Supreme Court of Justice and a bank branch during a rally against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, June 12, 2017.

"As soon as I arrived, I saw that it was quite intense ... A fire started at the building entrance and a demonstrator, his face covered, ran and waved the national flag like a symbol of victory. Protesters celebrated but a few minutes later, riot police arrived and dispersed them very quickly," Carlos Garcia Rawlins, the photographer said.

An exhausted Rohingya refugee woman touches the shore after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border by boat through the Bay of Bengal, in Shah Porir Dwip, Bangladesh, September 11, 2017.

"Photographs really helped highlight the plight (of Rohingya refugees)," said Danish Siddiqui, whose image was part of a package which won Reuters the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography.

"As a photojournalist you need to capture everything in one frame ... In that picture you can see the plume of smoke, the boat, the refugees ... All the elements were there to tell the story", he added.

A migrant family run away from tear gas in front of the border wall between the US and Mexico in Tijuana, November 25, 2018.

Part of a Reuters photo series of Central American migrants at the US border which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography, the image shows Honduran mother Maria Meza grabbing her daughters and fleeing a fuming tear gas canister launched by US authorities.

"It was very hectic at the time and it was only afterwards on my laptop I saw ... the girls were in diapers," Kim Kyung-Hoon, the photographer said.

"The mother was wearing a T-shirt with characters from Disney's 'Frozen' film. That was one of my daughter's favourite films when she was younger."

Lone activist Leshia Evans stands her ground while offering her hands for arrest as she is charged by riot police during a protest against police brutality outside the Baton Rouge Police Department in Louisiana, US, July 9 2016. 

Evans, a 28-year-old Pennsylvania nurse and mother of one, traveled to Baton Rouge to protest against the shooting of Alton Sterling. Sterling was a 37-year-old black man and father of five, who was shot at close range by two white police officers.

The shooting, captured on a multitude of cell phone videos, aggravated the unrest coursing through the United States in previous years over the use of excessive force by police, particularly against black men. 

Cats crowd the harbour on Aoshima Island in the Ehime prefecture in southern Japan, February 25, 2015.