Geneva, Switzerland, 10 June 2025 – The Giga Photo Festival will hold its official inauguration and award ceremony on 12 June at the Parc des Bastions in Geneva. In collaboration with the City of Geneva, the festival showcases the winning photographs from the Giga Photo Contest 2025, organized around the theme “The Joy of Connection.”
The exhibition features 30 winning images selected from 3,420 submissions across 89 countries. Photographers responded to an open call to portray how internet connectivity transforms human connection. The selected works explore how digital tools bridge physical distance, support solidarity, and enable interaction across communities.
The contest included three categories: Single Image, Junior Visual Storyteller, and Multiple Image. A student jury from HEAD–Genève and a panel of professional judges selected the winners.
Among the winners in the Multiple Image Category is a series documenting how, amid major legal shifts around abortion rights in Latin America and the United States, a new generation of women and girls is turning to digital tools to build networks of care and solidarity. “AcompañantAs weaves a powerful narrative of resistance and care in the face of abortion criminalization. It reveals how, through digital threads, networks of support quietly bloom. This award honors the quiet courage of those who, often unseen, nurture others, organize across borders, and stitch together transnational solidarities. It is a tribute to the invisible yet radiant ties of sorority and connection, bonds as tender as they are unbreakable”, shares Mahé Elipe, the author of the AcompañantAs photo series.
Other winning images showcase the powerful intersection between connectivity and major social and humanitarian issues : the human cost of migration, for instance, but also the resilience it reveals – particularly the invisible threads that bind loved ones across borders. In exile, technology has become a vital lifeline.
In remarks delivered during the event, Beatrice Ferrari, Director, International Affairs Directorate, Geneva Canton, said: “As a true global hub for connectivity, the city of Geneva is pleased to host the Giga Photo Festival. These photographs remind us that behind every signal, every screen, there is a story—of resilience, of care, of people reaching across borders to hold each other up. As a territory that has long stood at the crossroads of diplomacy and humanitarian action, the Geneva canton is proud to host this festival.”
“This exhibition shows that the desire to connect is universal,” said Christopher Fabian, Giga Co-Lead, UNICEF. “These photographs remind us that connectivity is not only about cables, technology and infrastructure, but about real people – students, families, and communities – building their lives in a safe, digital world.”
Alex Wong, Giga co-lead, ITU said: “Digital solutions have the potential to accelerate progress across 70% of the Sustainable Development Goals, impacting lives across the globe. These images underline the power of technology to shape our futures, sharing human stories of resilience and creativity.”
The festival is organized by Giga, a joint initiative of UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union. The exhibition will be transferred to Plainpalais from 13 June and remain open through the end of the month. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Every child should have access to quality education through universal internet connectivity, but nearly 1.3 billion children still lack internet at home. Half of the world’s approximately six million schools are still unconnected to the internet, denying some 500 million children and young people access to the internet and the benefits of online communication, learning and economic opportunity.
Giga is a partnership between UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) working to connect every school in the world to the Internet and every young person to information, opportunity and choice. Since its establishment in 2019, Giga and its partners have mapped over 2.1 million schools, using government data from more than 40 countries.
Connecting the last third of humanity who remains offline is a complex problem. Solving this problem requires out-of-the-box thinking and disruptive innovation, and Giga is at the forefront.
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For more information and interviews, please contact:
Sandra Bisin, UNICEF (Giga) Geneva: sbisin@unicef.org +33 774745678
Daniel Ginsinamung, UNICEF (Giga) Geneva: dginsianmung@unicef.org +41 798293259