Tanya Kaur Bindra

Work­ers in Mali’s small-scale gold mines toil long hours in dan­ger­ous con­di­tions for lit­tle pay.

Rare im­ages from the town of Gao where Malian and French troops fought a fierce bat­tle with rebels.

Over­seas work­ers from the Philip­pines con­tin­ue to face abuse and hard­ship as the UN marks In­ter­na­tion­al Mi­grants Day.

Dis­grun­tled sol­diers chased away the de­fence min­is­ter then put an end to Pres­i­dent Toure’s “in­com­pe­tent” rule in March.

Tens of thou­sands have fled con­flict in the north, to find poor con­di­tions, un­em­ploy­ment and home­sick­ness else­where.

About six mil­lion peo­ple at risk as food cri­sis wors­ens in the Sa­hel re­gion hit by poor har­vests.