No Iconic Images: visualising wars around the world – in pictures

Rescue workers at a mass grave in a forest on the outskirts of Izium, eastern Ukraine, where hundred of graves were found in September 2022

A group of Afghan female prosecutors stand on a rooftop overlooking Islamabad, Pakistan, in September 2022 as they wait for their asylum requests to be addressed after fleeing Afghanistan fearing persecution by the Taliban government

Armoured vehicles from France’s Operation Barkhane patrol the streets before the handover ceremony of a military base to the Malian army in Timbuktu. The last soldiers of the operation left Mali on 15 August 2022

A plume of smoke rises in Gaza City during an Israeli airstrike on 9 October 2023

Soviet prisoners of war cover victims’ bodies with earth from the banks of a ravine in Kyiv on 1 October 1941, resulting in changes to the topography. The photograph forms part of the work by the Centre for Spatial Technologies and Forensic Architecture on the Russian strike on the Kyiv TV tower in 2022, which uncovers layers of historical violence beneath the surface of war events

Rebel soldiers at an outpost in Camp Victoria, the headquarters of the Chin National Army, an alliance of ethnic rebel groups fighting the junta in the Chin province of Myanmar, in December 2023

Armenian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh wait in the centre of the town of Goris on 30 September 2023 before being evacuated to various Armenian cities. Armenia says 100,417 people from an estimated population of 120,000 had fled Nagorno-Karabakh since the breakaway region saw its decades-long fight against Azerbaijani rule end in sudden defeat

Raymond and his sons. Darien, Wisconsin, US, 2007. The Magnum photographers Peter van Agtmael and Newsha Tavakolian’s projects show how war permeates society, reshaping everyday life and social roles and demonstrating that war is never limited to the battlefield

Every day the Democratic Union party of Syria, an affiliate of Kurdistan Workers’ party, gathers young people from the Rojava area and teaches them its ideology at the Institute for Young Revolutionaries in Terbespe. Many of these teenagers will soon be drafted into YPJ and YPG armies

Demonstrators run past tyres set on fire during a protest against insecurity in Port-au-Prince in Haiti on 7 August 2023

Prince Badr bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia receives the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, in Jeddah on the eve of the Arab League summit in May 2023

Security forces patrol a street after the Ethiopian army took control of the town of Hayk in Amhara from the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front on 16 December 2021

Members of the Colombian political party Union Patriotica attend a ceremony at the Centro de Memoria Historica in Bogotá on 30 January 2023. The Inter-American court of human rights condemned the Colombian state for the ‘extermination’ of the Union Patriotica party in which almost 6,000 members and supporters became victims

Ukrainian emergency responders evacuate injured, pregnant Iryna Kalinina, 32, from a maternity hospital damaged by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol on 9 March 2022. Her baby was stillborn, and Iryna died half an hour later. Published on page 1 of the Guardian the following day“We have to make considered decisions about what to publish of a graphic nature because it’s important that the image engages the reader in the story rather than making them turn away. At the same time we don’t want to censor or patronise our readers by not being truthful about the reality.” Fiona Shields, Guardian director of photography and contributing curator