Text Sara Manisera Photos Arianna Pagani For IRIN News More than a year after Raqqa was liberated from so-called Islamic State, tens of thousands of people who returned to a devastated city are still struggling to rebuild, and basic services — especially for women and children — are notably lacking. …

On a warm afternoon in early March, a group of female poets gathered in Ridha Alwan, a coffee house in Baghdad’s middle-class Karrada neighbourhood. When Ridha Alwan first opened in the 1960s, it was the first café to serve roasted coffee in Baghdad. …

Nine months after the liberation of Raqqa from ISIS, the northern Syrian city lies in a heap of debris. Some buildings are crumpled in on themselves, punctured by protruding metal beams and drooping electric wiring, others are just skeletons of what were once people’s homes. …

It was almost midday when Father Paolo Dall’Oglio knocked on the gate of the Raqqa governor’s building. The father, a meditative 58-year-old Italian who had been in Syria for years, asked the guards in front of the elegant brick building if he could meet the emir. …

Asseguda en una lluminosa sala d’estar, al districte grec ortodox de Geitawi, la Fadwa Mahmoud joguineja amb un penjoll en forma d’oreneta. És refinada, té una mirada forta i unes arrugues marcades pel dolor i el temps suspès. …

Fadwa Mahmoud, one of the founders of Families for Freedom, displays a photograph of her and her son Maher, who disappeared along with her husband Abdulaziz Al-Kheir in Syria in 2012. (Arianna Pagani) Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue. Thank you…

Fotografia di Arianna Pagani tratta dal reportage realizzato a Jinwar, in Siria. Negli ultimi anni, e ancor più negli ultimi mesi, il tema dei diritti delle donne si è fatto sempre più urgente e diffuso. Ma la strada da fare per approdare a una vera uguaglianza è ancora molta. Per…

Ashti is the Kurdish word for peace. It’s also the name of a brightly painted two-storey clinic, packed with women waiting to see the gynecologist.Other than a few posters in the waiting room warning against child marriage, drawings of nursing mothers liven up the peeling paint. …

Coming together to treat women in desperate need of gynecological attention, two women displaced from Mosul built a clinic in the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region. Photos by Arianna Pagani. Dr Huda, a Sunni Muslim, and Rawnaq, an Assyrian Christian, both fled their homes in Mosul when militants from the…