These international awards for the best images of peace celebrate professional photographers who visualise what inspires hope. In short, the Alfred Fried Photography Award honours the ability of people to be caring and supportive.

Fridays for Future by Stefan Boness

These students, led by the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, peacefully counter all hostilities and reprimands that the debate on the climate crisis should be left to the experts.

Generation Greta has succeeded in getting things moving by campaigning for politicians around the world to take urgent action.

This peace movement has helped make more people think about the impact of the climate crisis on our lives.

Stefan Boness lives in Berlin and Manchester and works as a photographer on a wide range of topics. He has documented rightwing populist movements in cities such as Dresden and Cottbus and traced the steps of Walter Benjamin. He has also worked in Japan, and photographed landscapes of ruins and animal graveyards as well as Eritrean welders. With his book Flanders Fields he created a “photographic meditation on the battlefields” of the first world war.

The Forest Orphanage by Dilla Djalil-Daniel

Dilla Djalil-Daniel had intended to become a vet. She became a photographer instead, but has never lost interest in animals. The Indonesian has for years used her camera to document the way people treat animals.

Djalil-Daniel says mankind has all too often destroyed the natural habitats of animals or forced them into an industrial production chain. She has discovered an especially peaceful and touching example of people trying to make a difference at a rehabilitation centre for orphaned orangutans in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Here, baby orangutans whose mothers were killed or sold are prepared with great care for an independent life. They are not just fed and cared for, but are also taught to climb, build nests and find food.

Djalil-Daniel wants people to think about what is happening emotionally to animals.

Dilla Djalil-Daniel was born in 1966 in Jakarta, where she lives today. She was given a camera at the age of nine and used it to photograph her dogs. She studied English literature, before working for an advertising agency. Today wherever she goes she looks for animal sanctuaries such as an elephant hospital in Thailand or a rescue centre for maltreated donkeys in Nepal.

Born free: Mandela’s Generation of Hope by Ilvy Njiokiktjien

It would be unrealistic to regard post-apartheid South Africa as a paradise. According to a World Bank survey, the gulf between rich and poor people is getting wider and wider 25 years on from Nelson Mandela’s victory.

The Dutch photographer Ilvy Njiokiktjien has taken the time to look at how the once suppressed people of South Africa are overcoming the old dividing line of skin colour. And she has also captured couples in love.

Her work reminds us of a rare thing: the peaceful transformation from a racist regime, without vengeance.

Ilvy Njiokiktjien bought her first camera in 2002, graduated from the school of journalism in her home town and now works as a photographer and multimedia journalist.In 2012, she received the World Press Photo Award in the multimedia category. In 2018, her photos of newborn babies in Africa were shown at a Unicef exhibition at theUN in Geneva.

Camilo Leon-Quijano: The Rugbywomen – Tackling Stereotypes

Camilo Leon-Quijano has photographed a lighthearted story about success, ambition, encouragement and discipline.

In 2015, the coach Florian Clement founded a girls’ rugby team at the Collège Chantereine, which represents more than playing sport. It is about families of migrants freeing themselves from the poverty of the banlieues. And it has a happy ending: all 20 rugby players have graduated from school, and some have been recruited by professional clubs.

Camilo Leon-Quijano, born in Bogotá, Colombia, lives in Paris, where he studied sociology and focused on Latin American studies at the Sorbonne. He was a finalist and winner in several competitions such as Lens Culture, Prix la France Mutualiste, and the Unicef Photo of the Year 2018.

Alain Laboile: Le temps retrouvé

In Arbis, a small village south-east of Bordeaux, a photographer captures carefree images of his six children.

The children are photographed running, climbing, playing hide and seek, bathing in the mud, jumping into water and examining cats, toads, frogs and blindworms.

Laboile earns a living as a sculptor and he also photographs his family. For him it is the visual journal of having made peace with himself, which he began in 2006.

Alain Laboile’s heart-warming, engaging and positive family photographs have enchanted people all over the world. He regards the books with photos of his children as a treasure, not least because he has only one photo from his own childhood.

Children’s Peace Image of the Year: Slow Stream by Dune Laboile

The peace captured here, is the peace of a free childhood. This picture was taken by 12-year-old Dune Laboile – the fifth of Alain Laboile’s six children – when camping on the banks of the French brook Dordogne.