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AFP / Philippe Huguen

COP21: Less than meets the eye

Marlowe Hood Monday 21 December 2015

Following the COP21 climate change accord struck in Paris earlier this month, many journalists, analysts, activists and even negotiators embedded in the climate change saga were left wondering, writes AFP's environment and science reporter Marlowe Hood.

"Six years – more than 20 if one starts the clock with the Rio Earth Summit – of maddeningly Byzantine negotiations, moving sideways or in circles as often as forward, have finally yielded a universal climate accord.  But what has truly been achieved?

"A lot."

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AFP / Marco Longari

Voting under fire

Marco Longari Thursday 17 December 2015

AFP's chief Africa photographer Marco Longari spent two weeks in the Central African Republic covering the run-up and the voting on on a constitutional referendum in the impoverished country that has been torn by violence since 2013.

"It’s complicated coverage. You can feel something is brewing and things are not settled. There is constant stress, you always have to watch out, you can never relax. And on Sunday, we saw why."

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AFP / Munir uz Zaman

Living on borrowed time

Chris Otton Monday 14 December 2015

Ahead of the climate talks in Paris, AFP's Delhi-based South Asia bureau chief Chris Otton visited an island that seems doomed to disappear in the face of rising sea levels triggered by global warming.

The islanders of Kutubdia and the millions of other people who live along Bangladesh’s coast are among the most vulnerable to the impact of global warming.

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AFP / Raul Arboleda

Interview with an assassin

Florence Panoussian Friday 11 December 2015

When she went to interview Jhon Jairo Velasquez, the infamous hitman of Colombia's most famous drug lord Pablo Escobar, AFP's Bogota bureau chief Florence Panoussian "expected to see a cynic with a cold stare, a caricature from a gangster movie."

"Instead I see a charming, smiling, amiable man, who is fascinated by firearms but who has also learned to manipulate and seduce to survive in the jungle of the drug lords and what he calls the 'hell of prison.'”

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