Documentaries Throughout the week BBC World Service offers a wide range of documentaries and other factual programmes. This podcast offers you the chance to access landmark series from our archive.
2007.4.20 BBC World Service and seven of its partner stations around the world bring a global perspective on the theme of belief.This week Amsterdam.
The Falklands War and the White House
2007.4.25 Peter Snow investigates the battle that raged within the US government over the Falklands War, revealing previously unheard archive interviews.
Death to America - Part 1
2007.4.30 Michael Goldfarb takes a thoughtful look at the rise of global anti Americanism. In part one, he visits Venezuela.
World Stories: Surviving the Century
2007.6.8 Haimo Li travels to China to find out how many traditional values the Mosuo have held onto, despite the invasion of tourism and popular culture.
Winning the Peace
2007.6.11 Paddy Ashdown argues that Winning the Peace is much harder than winning a war. In part one he looks at Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War
The Treasury War - Part 1
2007.6.12 Mark Gregory investigates how the US government has been economically squeezing its enemies. In part one we examine North Korea
Treasury War Part 2
2007.6.14 Mark Gregory looks at how the USA is trying to squeeze the Iranian economy. The programme features an exclusive interview with Nick Burns, the US Under-Secretary in charge of Iran policy at the State Department.
DocArchive: Assignment - Blackwater 27 Dec 2007
2007.12.27 There are now as many private security contractors in Iraq as there are US soldiers. To whom are they accountable when things go wrong? Steve Evans reports on the most controversial contractor, Blackwater, which has been criticised by the Iraqi government, American politicians and its own employees.
DocArchive: Debt Threat
2007.12.31 The first programme will show how rapidly the shock wave of the credit crunch is spreading and why it is now moving far beyond the sub-prime homeowners where it began.
DocArchive: Press For Freedom Part 4
2008.1.2 In the final part of the series Roy Greenslade profiles the head of News Corporation Rupert Murdoch.
DocArchive: Assignment - Taxi to the Dark Side 3 Jan 2008
2008.1.4 American film-maker Alex Gibney tells the story of an Afghan taxi driver, tortured to death by American soldiers and military police in Bagram airbase. Were they rogue soldiers, or was the torture authorised at the highest levels of government?
DocArchive: Only One Bakira
2008.1.4 Bakira Hasecic is unrelenting in her pursuit of the war criminals of the Bosnian war. How does she and the members of the Association of Women Victims of War find the strength to talk about the rapes and other horrors they endured?
DocArchive: Debt Threat Part 2
2008.1.7 The dangers of the present crisis turning into a full scale recession, and at the seemingly desperate attempts of bankers, regulators and politicians to prevent that happening.
DocArchive: A Dollar A Day - Part 1
2008.1.9 In this four part series, Mike Wooldridge looks at what it's really like to have to live on one dollar a day. The first programme focuses on Kenya.
DocArchive: Assignment - S Korea computer addiction 10 Jan 2008
2008.1.10 Computer gaming has become a national obsession in South Korea but there is a dark side. Gaming, like gambling, can become an addiction that has even led to death. Julian Pettifer reports.
DocArchive: Friday Documentary - Looted Art: Part One
2008.1.10 At the end of World War Two, as Nazi Germany lay in ruins, millions of works of art were secrety shipped back to Russia by the Soviet Army. Charles Wheeler now investigates their fate and the political row that still surrounds them in Looted Art.
DocArchive: Desperate Dreams Part 1
2008.1.11 Every year, thousands of young men and women from sub-Saharan Africa set off across the desert dreaming of a better life in Europe. Part one: George from Cameroon starts his journey.
Doc: A Dollar A Day - Part 2
2008.1.16 In this four part series, Mike Wooldridge looks at what it's really like to have to live on one dollar a day. The second programme focuses on Peru.
Doc: Assignment - On the trail of spammers 17 Jan 2007
2008.1.17 Simon Cox tries to track down the criminals who plague us with spam emails offering everything from get rich schemes to products to improve our sex lives.
Doc: Looted Art: Part II
2008.1.17 Charles Wheeler is on the trail of art seized by the Soviets at the end of World War II
Doc: Desperate Dreams - Part 2
2008.1.18 The second in a three part series. Every year, thousands of young people from sub-Saharan Africa set off across the desert dreaming of a better life in Europe. Part two: The Journey.
Doc: A Dollar A Day - Part 3
2008.1.23 In this four part series, Mike Wooldridge looks at what it's really like to have to live on one dollar a day. The third programme focuses on elder people in India.
Assignment - African Footballers 24 Jan 2008
2008.1.24 Millions of young African boys dream of following such football stars as Didier Drogba and Emmanuel Eboue to Europe to make their fortune. Only a handful succeed whilst many more fall into the hands of unscrupulous clubs and agents who exploit them. Henry Bonsu investigates the growth in what has been described as football slavery.
Doc: Desperate Dreams Part 3
2008.1.24 The final part of a three part series. Every year, thousands of young people from sub-Saharan Africa set off across the desert dreaming of a better life in Europe. Part two: Returning home.
Doc: Fading Traditions - Part 1
2008.1.25 The number of Moroccan story-tellers, known as halakis, is dwindling. Why is their art dying out?
Doc: A Dollar A Day - Part 4
2008.1.30 In this four part series, Mike Wooldridge looks at what it's really like to have to live on one dollar a day. The third programme focuses on education in Ghana.
Doc: Assignment - Kenya violence 30 Jan 2008
2008.1.31 This week's Assignment reports on the post election violence in Kenya which has claimed the lives of up to 900 people. The opposition claim that the poll was rigged and the violence, which began in Western Kenya, has spread to other parts of the country. Pascale Harter travelled to the town of Eldoret in western Kenya to trace the roots of the tribal violence that has pitted neighbour against neighbour.
Doc: Fading Traditions - Part 2
2008.1.31 Georgia, considered to be the birthplace of wine, risks losing its wine industry. How are the producers coping?
Doc: Securing Pakistan's Bomb
2008.2.4 What would happen if the government of Pakistan, one of the world's nuclear powers, were to collapse? Would extreme Islamist militants be able to get their hands on the country's nuclear weapons?
Doc: Pain: Episode One
2008.2.6. In this two part series, former BBC Iraq correspondent, Andrew North takes a personal journey through his own experience of pain and that of others.
Doc: Assignment - Kurdistan Corruption 05 Feb 2008
2008.2.7. With its functioning parliament, a booming oil economy and a small but well-trained army, the Kurdish area of Iraq appears to offer a model for other areas of the country. But Kate Clark discovers growing corruption and dissatisfaction with the region's government.
Doc: Fading Traditions - part 3
2008.2.7. Temple prostitutes: The ancient Hindu tradition of dedicating young girls to the temple has come up against the modern horrors of AIDS.
Doc: Bangladesh Floods: Three Months On
2008.2.11 It's been three months since cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh. BBC reporter, Siobhann Tighe returns to speak to some of the survivors. She also talks to government advisers about the vulnerability of Bangladesh and what can be done to be better prepared.
Doc: Pain: Episode Two
2008.2.13 In this second programme on Pain, Andrew North explores the strategies we use to survive pain, through expressing and suppressing it.
Doc: Uncovering Pakistan - Part 1
2008.2.14 Why have so many of the hopes and aspirations of Pakistan's founders remained unfulfilled?
Doc: Uncovering Pakistan - Part 2
2008.2.14 Owen Bennett-Jones examines the rise of Islamist militancy in Pakistan and the risk of the country being split apart.
Doc: The Kremlin and the World - Part 1
2008.2.18 Nearly twenty years after the Cold War, there’s a new chill in relations between Russia and the West. Tim Whewell finds out what has happened to Russia's historic partnership with the Western Europe and the US.
Doc: The Kremlin and the World - Part 2
2008.2.20 Pipeline Power: Could Russia's vast energy sources possibly be the missiles of the future? Tim Whewell investigates why Russia's state energy company, Gazprom fell out with Ukraine.
Doc: The Danish Nazi
2008.2.21 Soeren Kam is a former Danish SS Officer and one of the most wanted Nazi war criminals still alive. Now 86 and living in Bavaria, Kam admitted taking part in the abduction and killing of an anti-Nazi newspaper editor in Copenhagen in 1943. For Assignment Steve Rosenburg goes in search of Soeren Kam and talks to the people who know his story.
Doc: Friday Documentary: After the KGB - Part One
2008.2.22 Martin Sixsmith looks at Russia's fast growing and politically influential secret service.
Doc: The Kremlin and the World - Part 3
2008.2.25 Tim Whewell investigates why a 'new' Cold War could be underway and if Russia and the US is embarking once again on a race for arms.
Doc: The Kremlin and the World - Part 4
2008.2.27 Martin Sixsmith looks at Russia's fast growing and politically influential secret service.
Doc: Assignment - Unknown Neighbours
2008.2.28 Martin Sixsmith gets under the skin of the fastest growing and arguably most politically influential secret service in the world the "new KGB".
Doc: After the KGB: Part Two
2008.2.29 Programme One: BBC correspondent Jim Muir evaluates how war has changed Iraq from the beginning of the invasion to the handover of power.
DocArchive: How Iraq's War Shaped Our World: Part One
2008.3.3 Programme One: BBC correspondent Jim Muir evaluates how war has changed Iraq from the beginning of the invasion to the handover of power.
DocArchive: Assignment Jacob Zuma: The Investigation
2008.3.6 Jacob Zuma is one of the most powerful men in South Africa. He controls the ruling African National Congress and is poised to replace President Thabo Mbeki as head of state. But Jacob Zuma has a problem. Prosecutors say he's corrupt and hope to bring him to trial in August. Mr Zuma says the charges are political, designed to keep him from power. For Assignment Martin Plaut travelled to South Africa to investigate.
DocArchive: Boom or Bust
2008.3.7 Sharon Mascall investigates the Australian mining industry where many inexperienced workers are lured by high wages but face harsh conditions, poor safety standards and an uncertain future.
DocArchive: How Iraq's War Shaped Our World: Part Two
2008.3.10 Magdi Abdelhadi explores how the dream of a democratic Arab world was promoted then put in reverse as things went wrong in Iraq.
DocArchive: Assignment: Afghanistan - Winning Hearts and Minds
2008.3.13 According to US intelligence the Afghan president Hamid Karzai controls only 30 percent of Afghanistan, with the Taleban holding 10 percent. Most of the country is under local tribal control. But building support among the tribes is now at the core of a new American counter-insurgency strategy. The Americans believe they've now got a blueprint for winning hearts and minds. The BBC's Alastair Leithead has been following US troops and their British allies to find out how the plan is working.
DocArchive: Teacher Flower
2008.3.14 In the 1980s Kathy Flower became the most famous face on Chinese television, as English teacher to millions of students long isolated from the outside world. Now she returns to a very different country as it prepares to host the Beijing Olympics.
DocArchive: How Iraq's War Shaped Our World: Part Three
2008.3.17 In Programme Three, Lyse Doucet looks at how the Iraq War changed the regional balance of power.
DocArchive: Pirates Part Three
2008.3.18 Nick Rankin enters cyber space to explore the world of intellectual piracy - the stealing of ideas.
DocArchive: The Kids Who Ran Iraq
2008.3.20 After the invasion of Iraq in 2003 hundreds of young American recruits were sent by Washington to help run the Coalition Provisional Authority, the body set up to administer Iraq. The CPA's tenure was widely criticised, as were its staff who, critics say, were simply political appointees with little or no experience relevant to the massive task they faced. Five years on Pascale Harter speaks to some of the so-called Brat Pack of US recruits to find out if they feel proud of what they achieved.
DocArchive: Escaping the Water Wolf
2008.3.21 With climate change bringing new threats of rising sea levels and increased rainfall, will luck and ingenuity continue to save the Netherlands from submersion?
DocArchive: Return to Kurdistan - Part 1
2008.3.26 In the first part of the series Return to Kurdistan, Michael Goldfarb follows the upheaval of Kurdistan through the eyes of his translator Ahmad Shawkat.
DocArchive: How Iraq's War Shaped Our World: Part Four
2008.3.26 John Simpson looks at the how the Iraq War has affected America's international role and reputation.
DocArchive: Assignment: No more child witches in DRC?
2008.3.27 Is it possible to legislate against deeply held beliefs? That's what the authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo are hoping to do. They want to make it a criminal offence to accuse a child of being a witch. Many of the hundreds of children who are sleeping rough on the streets of the capital city Kinshasa have been accused of being witches. But can such a law be enforced and can it really make a difference in a country that has been so fractured by war? For Assignment Angus Crawford spends time with the street children of Kinshasa to see if they think the new law can work.
DocArchive: No Way Out
2008.3.28 Shazia Khan investigates the agony of forced marriages in the UK and the risks of trying to escape it.
DocArchive: Simpson Returns to China
2008.3.29 Programme one: The Road From Tiananmen charts John Simpson's return to modern China 19 years after he witnessed the massacre of June 4 1989
DocArchive: Return to Kurdistan Part 2
2008.4.2 For Iraqi Kurds these are the best times they have ever known. But can the desire for full independence be contained? Michael Goldfarb goes to Kirkuk disputed heart of northern Iraq's oil industry and the future source of wealth.
DocArchive: Assignment: The Most Dangerous Gang in America
2008.4.3. The United States has long been home to violent gangs, from the Mafia to the Bloods and Crips. But recently, US authorities have warned of the dangers of a transnational, ultra-violent gang with its origins in Central America. The FBI has now opened an office in El Salvador to deal with the threat of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. For Assignment, Maurice Walsh travelled to Washington DC's suburbs and San Salvador to take a look at MS-13, dubbed "The Most Dangerous Gang in America."
DocArchive: The Grass is Greener
2008.4.4. Why do Ghanaians dream of living a better life abroad? What must change in Ghana for more Ghanaians to want to stay?
DocArchive: Simpson Returns to China - part 2
2008.4.7. John Simpson meets the ladies cracking down on spitting in Beijing before the Olympics and chats to the lady everyone's calling China's Oprah Winfrey on the set of the hit TV show Win in China
DocArchive: The Message from China
2008.4.9. Dr Anne-Marie Brady from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand investigates how the Chinese Communist Party has adapted its propaganda methods to suit the 21st century.
DocArchive: Call me Nana
2008.4.11 More than 65,000 grandparents in Canada are raising their grandchildren on their own, turning their lives upside down to raise a child for a second time.
DocArchive: A Dollar a Day - China
2008.4.12 China is on track to meeting the Millennium Development Goal of halving Dollar-a-day poverty. But what uncertainties lie ahead now the Iron Bowl has been smashed? Mike Wooldrige reports.
DocArchive: Elegy for the Tech
2008.4.16 Award winning poet Fred D’Aguiar is head of creative writing at Virginia Tech, the scene of a mass shooting of students and staff one year ago. He lost a student in the tragedy and had, in the past taught the shooter. In this documentary Fred reflects on the events of that day and the poetry both he and his students have written since.
2008.4.17 The last few weeks have seen an increase in violence in Somalia. Insurgents have stepped up attacks on the Ethiopian army and on the Somali transitional government it's backing. Ethiopia sent it's troops into Somalia at the end of 2006, to remove an Islamist movement - the Islamic Courts - from the capital. But now Ethiopia is bogged down and anger at its presence has boosted supported for the insurgents. In Assignment, Rob Walker goes in search of a radical Islamist movement which is playing an increasingly deadly role in the conflict.
DocArchive: Harare Festival
2008.4.18 Manuel Bagorro, the director of the Harare International Festival of the Arts, describes his efforts to bring a cultural highlight in the midst of the election chaos in Zimbabwe.
DocArchive: Strangers in Marseilles
2008.4.21 Laurie Taylor explores Marseille's unique racial geography to find out what kept the peace during 2005 and 2007 when race riots tore at the fabric of French society.
DocArchive: The My Lai Tapes - Part One
2008.4.22 Forty years ago in the village of My Lai in South Vietnam, a massacre took place. The victims were innocent Vietnamese civilians – 504 mainly women, old men, children and babies. They were murdered, and in many cases, raped by US soldiers. This episode of the Vietnam War became known as 'The My Lai Massacre' and proved to be a turning point in the war. In the My Lai Tapes Robert Hodierne tells the story of what happened that day in interviews with the victims and the perpetraotors.
DocArchive: Assignment - Granny Dumping
2008.4.24 Abandonment, abuse and neglect of the elderly by their own children and grandchildren is at record levels in India. In a society where reverence and respect towards senior citizens has been a source of pride, Tinku Ray reports for Assignment on why things have changed in India.
DocArchive: The Convict Streak
2008.4.24 The resourcefulness and resilience of prisioners fighting for freedom that make Australians today proudly boast of their own inherited 'convict streak'
DocArchive: Policing the UN
2008.4.28 The BBC's Africa editor Martin Plaut sets out to examine serious new allegations of corruption and wrongdoing within the United Nations' peacekeeping operations.
DocArchive: How Crime Took on the World: Part One
2008.4.28 As part of his investigation into global crime, Misha Glenny is in Canada, where the wholesale production of marijuana is posing a challenge to the US-led 'War on Drugs'.
DocArchive: The My Lai Tapes - Part Two
2008.4.29 Forty years ago, 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were killed by US soldiers. It became known as ‘The My Lai Massacre' and was covered up by the army for almost a year. In the second part of ‘The My Lai Tapes’, presented by Robert Hodierne, you can hear for the first time, the taped recordings of the US Army’s internal inquiry into the massacre.
DocArchive: Assignment: Football in the Holy City
2008.5.1 In this week's Assignment David Goldblatt travels to Israel to meet the fans of Beitar Jerusalem football club. As you'll hear in this programme the fans pride themselves on their extreme nationalist views and anti-arab chanting at matches. Beitar fans boast that an Arab never has and never will play for the club. Now under the ownership of flamboyant Russian Billionaire Arkadi Gaydamak Beitar is top of the Israeli league, but the behaviour of its hard-core fans continues to cause trouble. Since this programme was recorded, Beitar fans have been punished for a pitch invasion, and are now banned from their own stadium for the rest of the season. Beitar remain top of the Israeli league.
DocArchive: Escape to New Zealand
2008.5.2 Environmental refugees seek a home somewhere in the planet where the predicted global changes can, perhaps, be weathered.
DocArchive: How crime took on the world: Part two
2008.5.5 In the second of this series which charts the explosion of international organised crime, Misha Glenny goes to the Balkans to follow the trail of smuggled cigarettes.
DocArchive: Philosophy in the Streets
2008.5.6 Nick Fraser looks at the intellectual revolution that spread from Paris throughout the world, particularly to America and then to Britain, in 1968.
DocArchive: Where the Buffalo Roam
2008.5.9 How have non-native creatures - from birds to bovines, reptiles to rhesus monkeys - become unlikely, but permanent, residents of Hong Kong?
DocArchive: How Crime Took on the World: Part Three
2008.5.12 In the third part of this series on international crime, Misha Glenny is in South Africa where since the end of Apartheid, personal security has become almost a national obsession; the number of private security firms has mushroomed.
DocArchive: Living With Chico Mendes
2008.5.13 To mark the 20th anniversary of his assassination, Nick Maes looks at the life of Chico Mendes, the highly significant green activist who helped to galvanise the race to preserve the Amazon. Nick investigates what Chico Mendes achieved and gains exclusive access to his family.
DocArchive: Assignment - Beyond Mark Weil
2008.5.15 Last September, Mark Weil, the radical theatre director of the Ilkhom theatre in Uzbekistan, was stabbed to death while returning home from a rehearsal. As the regime in Tashkent hardened it's line Mark Weil continued to challenge the authorities with his work. For Assignment Natalya Antelava asks whether this radical endeavour can survive without its director in an environment that is becoming more and more repressive.
DocArchive: Escape from Time
2008.5.16 Who wouldn't like to escape the relentless march of time? Find out about the routes from those who attempt to escape the tyranny of time.
DocArchive: How Crime Took on the World
2008.5.17 Cyber-crime is the fastest-growing sector of global-organised crime, worth about US$100 billion a year. Misha Glenny travels to Sao Paulo to find out why Brazil is the cyber-crime capital of the world.
DocArchive: What Next For Kenya? - Part One
2008.5.20 In this two-part series, former BBC East Africa Correspondent Mike Wooldridge travels from the bustling capital, Nairobi, to the Rift Valley to report on the issues behind the conflict that erupted in Kenya at the turn of the year.
DocArchive: Kidnapped: Part One
2008.5.23 Presenter Ritula Shah reunites former hostage Norman Kember - kidnapped in Iraq - with the people who were personally involved in negotiations to free him, and who put their lives on hold to get him back.
DocArchive: Failure at the Central Bank
2008.5.24 For the last six decades, central bankers have run the international financial system with the aid of a powerful set of economic levers handed to them after the World War 2. Last year, these levers came off in their hands. In this two-part series Robert Peston examines how the former supermen of global financial economy became pathetic weaklings.
DocArchive: What Next For Kenya? - Part Two
2008.5.27 In this two-part series, former BBC East Africa Correspondent Mike Wooldridge travels from the bustling capital, Nairobi, to the Rift Valley to report on the issues behind the conflict that erupted in Kenya at the turn of the year.
DocArchive: Assignment 22 May 08
2008.5.29 The Commodities Bubble: Michael Robinson investigates and reveals how the commodities markets are attracting major players now looking for somewhere to invest other than the dollar, banking or shares and how this has affected the price of food products around the world.
DocArchive: Assignment
2008.5.29 Lucy Ash finds out if new trade deals and diplomatic dialogue with Libya can encourage them to abandon torture and oppression for political reform and human rights improvements.
DocArchive: Kidnapped - part two
2008.5.30 Dr Thomas Hargrove, an American scientist kidnapped by FARC, is reunited with the family's German neighbour, who was part of 'Team Tom' which organized the negotiations.
DocArchive: Taxi to the Dark Side
2008.5.31 In Taxi To The Dark Side, American film-maker Alex Gibney reports on the use of torture by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Was the torture the work of a few rogue soldiers, or officially approved by the Pentagon?
DocArchive: Age of Terror Part 1
2008.6.4 In the first part of this series, Peter Taylor reveals how events unfolded in the 1976 hijacking of an Air France plane on a flight from Tel Aviv to Paris which ends with a bid to rescue hostages from Idi Amin's Uganda
DocArchive: Auroville - Assignment
2008.6.5 The town of Auroville in southern India was built in 1968 on the basis of a utopian ideal - that a community could live in peace and harmony without having to worry about food and shelter. But forty years on there are unsettling allegations of abuse emerging from the City of Dawn. For Assignment Rachel Wright visits Auroville and tells the disturbing story of a dream gone wrong.
DocArchive: Argentina – Dancing To The Music Of The Mind
2008.6.5 Argentinian film director, writer and tango enthusiast, Edgardo Cozarinsky, talks to artists, dancers, novelists and other Argentinians about why psychotherapy and tango have such a pervasive hold on the Argentine mind and soul.
DocArchive: Leila's Story
2008.6.6 The powerful story of a young Iranian woman called Leila, sold into prostitution at the age of nine by her own family and sentenced to hang aged 18.
DocArchive: Age of Terror - part 2
2008.6.11 In the second part of this series, Peter Taylor investigates how two events in 1987 contributed to the beginnings of the road to peace in Northern Ireland.
DocArchive: Rome's New Wolf - Assignment
2008.6.12 The new mayor of Rome Gianni Alemanno was once a so-called neo-fascist - a supporter of anti-democratic, right wing radicalism. And his election has come at a time of mounting ethnic tension in Italy. As Christian Fraser now discovers in Assignment, there are fears that Rome could be about to suffer the return of hard right, authoritarian rule.
DocArchive: Bomb Hunters
2008.6.12 More than 30 years after the end of the Vietnam War, Bomb Hunters, tells the stories of the people living in Xieng Khuang in Laos and how they survive in a land still littered with unexploded ordnance.
DocArchive: Race and Reconciliation - Part One
2008.6.13 Fourteen years after liberation and 60 years since the beginning of what was then 'apartheid', Audrey Brown explores and uncovers the extent to which race still plays a part in everyday life for those living in South Africa.
DocArchive: Age of Terror - Part 3
2008.6.18 In the third part of this series, Peter Taylor investigates The Paris Plot, the hijacking of a plane in Algiers on its way to Paris; a plan to use a plane as a weapon of mass destruction.
DocArchive: The Baseball Factory
2008.6.19 Baseball may be the United States' national sport - but this year, 2008, almost half of all its professional players come from overseas - and some 40 per cent of them from the Dominican Republic, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti. For Assignment David Goldblatt visits Haiti to report on what has become a significant export industry for this country of nine million people.
DocArchive: Feeding the Spirit of New Orleans
2008.6.20 Sheila Dillon reports on the work of restaurateurs, farmers, fishermen and activists to restore the culinary heritage of a devastated city.
DocArchive: Race and Reconciliation - Part Two
2008.6.23 In the second part of this series, Audrey Brown travels to South Africa to explore how privilege and access to resources is increasingly being seen as an issue of colour.
DocArchive: Age of Terror - part 4
2008.6.25 In 1998, a truck bomb exploded outside the American embassy in Nairobi. Over 200 people died and thousands were injured. It features an extraordinary interview with the FBI agent who tracked down and questioned a suspected al-Qaeda bomber. It was Osama Bin Laden's first major strike in his jihad against America.
DocArchive: Burma - Reporting the Cyclone: Assignment
2008.6.26 This week's Assignment tells the story of the Burmese cyclone through the eyes and ears of the few BBC journalists who managed to get into the country after the disaster. Hear the story of the cyclone unfold told by those who witnessed it first hand. That's Reporting The Cyclone, from Assignment this week.
DocArchive: Race and Reconciliation - Part Three
2008.6.27 In the third part of this series, Audrey Brown travels to Atteridgeville, a township outside the capital, Pretoria, to explore what really lay behind the recent attacks by South Africans on foreigners.
DocArchive: Health for All
2008.6.27 Is health for all a fact or just fiction? Helen Sharp asks if the world has the will, people and money to deliver basic good health to everyone.
DocArchive: Countdown to the Olympics: Part One
2008.7.2 As the world counts down to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Gerry Northam investigates China's claims of 'vigorous growth in the public practice of religion' but he discovers people are still being persecuted and oppressed for practising religion.
DocArchive: Health for All Part 2
2008.7.4 Campaigners for improving maternal health have been lobbying the G8 to get the topic on the agenda for the next meeting in Japan. In programme two of the series Health for All, Uduak Amimo asks is there enough political will to combat maternal mortality?
DocArchive: Policing the Poppy Fields - Part One
2008.7.7 Kate Clark gains rare access to the fight against the Afghan opium trade and asks how effective attempts to control it have been.
DocArchive: Countdown to the Olympics: Part Two
2008.7.9 China says hosting the Olympics has accelerated national reforms, technological advances and greater freedoms overall but Gerry Northam investigates claims that life has gotten worse for China's poor.
DocArchive: Congo's Contract of the Century
2008.7.10 In a multi billion dollar deal China has promised to rebuild DR Congo's crumbling infrastructure in exchange for a valuable slice of Congo's vast mineral wealth. What's being called the Contract of the Century was negotiated in secret and has left some people in the country wondering who stands to benefit most from the deal - for Assignment Tim Whewell travels to the DR Congo to find out.
DocArchive: The World's Shifting Balance
2008.7.11 The dynamics of the old world and the new world are changing and the balance of economic systems is shifting. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times asks leading economists how important is the American financial cycle to the rest of the world now?
DocArchive: Policing the Poppy Fields - Part Two
2008.7.11 In the second part of this series, Kate Clark reports from those provinces where an opium ban is in force, but farmers are feeling the pressure.
DocArchive: Building Better Health
2008.7.15 Part One: Jill McGivering compares two very different free health systems in the developed world: the British NHS and that of the US state of Massachusetts.
DocArchive: Football's Conmen - Assignment
2008.7.17 An undercover BBC investigation has exposed how young African footballers are being defrauded by conmen posing as talent scouts from English Premiership clubs. Victims are duped into parting with thousands of pounds in the false belief that they are paying an official fee for a trial to play with their favourite teams. Gavin Lee reports from Nigeria for Assignment.
DocArchive: Secrets in the Blood - Part One
2008.7.18 In this two-part investigation, Matt McGrath sets out to expose corruption, drug use and cover-ups at the highest levels in sport.
DocArchive: Beijing Calling - Part One
2008.7.18 Russell Fuller follows the difficult journeys of six hopefuls from around the world in the run up to the Beijing Olympics.
DocArchive: Building Better Health - Part Two
2008.7.23 Jill McGivering explores whether China is doing enough to provide healthcare to 1.3 billion people and what it can learn from the struggles of the developed world.
DocArchive: Trouble in the Townships: Assignment
2008.7.23 In May violence against African immigrants exploded across South Africa. Two months on thousands are still displaced, living in camps and shelters. Robert Walker travels to one of the townships in Johannesburg where the attacks started and asks whether the violence could happen again.
DocArchive: Secrets in the Blood - Part Two
2008.7.25 In this two-part investigation, Matt McGrath sets out to expose corruption, drug use and cover-ups at the highest levels in sport.
DocArchive: The Trouble with Money - Part 1
2008.7.29 With the world's economy now threatened by what some believe is the most dangerous crisis since the depression of the 1930s, Michael Robinson looks at the deepening international financial turmoil.
DocArchive: South Africa's Promised Land: Assignment
2008.7.31 After the ending of apartheid in South Africa, the transfer of land from white to black was a key ANC promise - a proud calling card to correct the injustices of apartheid. But many critics argue that the reform programme has gone badly wrong. For Assignment Rosie Goldsmith reports on the struggle for South Africa's promised land, which is driving a political, economic and racist wedge down the middle of an already tense country.
DocArchive: The Billion Dollar Election - Part One - 527s
2008.8.1 The United States is due to have the first billion-dollar election in its history. The BBC's Steve Evans presents this two-part investigation into election spending done in collaboration with the Centre for Public Integrity in Washington DC.
DocArchive: The Trouble with Money - Part Two
2008.8.6 Will there be a return to the dreaded days of "stagflation" with weak growth and rising inflation. Can economic policymakers find a way to deal with this double danger? Or is further pain inevitable?
DocArchive: Soft Jihad: Assignment
2008.8.7 In the United States a small but increasingly vocal group of people believe that members of the country's Muslim community are working from within to turn America into an Islamic state. This group of right wing thinkers believe this so-called 'Soft Jihad' is being carried out in schools, universities and other institutions across the country and they want to put a stop to it. In Assignment, Pascale Harter travels to America to find out how this fear is finding a foothold in public opinion there and hears from some of those accused of being the 'soft jihadists'.
DocArchive: The Right to Know - Part 1
2008.8.7 Freedom of information is well on the way to being seen as an essential prerequisite for a modern democracy. But there's almost always a backlash from politicians and officials.
DocArchive: The Billion Dollar Election: Part 2 - Ambassadors
2008.8.8 Prestigious job. Exotic location. Stately home, fine food and wine, and many other perks thrown in. Yours for only $200,000. The position a US ambassadorship. Around a third of all US ambassadors are not career diplomats; they're political appointees and almost all of them are major donors, wealthy businessmen. Is this really the way for the US to run its foreign policy?
DocArchive: Why they're dying in the Congo - Part One
2008.8.13 BBC World Affairs Correspondent Mark Doyle explores why over five million people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the past decade.
DocArchive: Secrets in the Family - Assignment
2008.8.14 During Argentina's Dirty War of the seventies and eighties thousands of leftists and dissidents vanished after being abducted by the security forces. Many of the women detained gave birth in detention centres before being killed and their babies were given to military families to bring up. Now, as Daniel Schweimler reports for Assignment, those babies have come of age in Argentina and some are trying to seek justice for what happened to them.
DocArchive: Your Right to Know - Part 2
2008.8.14 What do Freedom of Information laws actually achieve? Are they sometimes more symbolic than practical in their impact?
DocArchive: Rehearsing for War
2008.8.18 The extraordinary US military base at the heart of a vast shift in American military strategy, aiming for nation-building and peacekeeping.
DocArchive: Why they're dying in the Congo - Part Two
2008.8.20 BBC World Affairs correspondent Mark Doyle continues travelling from the west to the east of the DR Congo on a journey to find out why so many people have died and continue to die in that country.
DocArchive: A young life of crime: Assignment
2008.8.21 The experience of growing up in a socially deprived, inner city neighbourhood is a common one, no matter where you may live in the world. In Britain's main cities, police and politicians say a worrying trend has developed where some young people are now carrying and using both knives and guns at an ever younger age. The BBC's Nina Robinson takes a day out of the life of two youngsters in the English city of Birmingham to find out a little more about what it is that shapes their lives.
DocArchive: What Lies Beneath - Part One
2008.8.21 International seas are largely unregulated, meaning most underwater archaeological wealth can be retrieved and sold without any obstacle. Can a new UNESCO convention bring some order?
DocArchive: The Presidential Contenders
2008.8.25 Barack Obama:the profile of one of the two individuals who are the presumptive nominees in the US presidential election.
DocArchive: Al-Qaeda's Internal Debate
2008.8.26 BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner talks to former allies of Osama bin Laden who are now engaged in countering the terrorist leader's agenda.
DocArchive: Spain's Civil War - Breaking the Silence
2008.8.28 Following recent legislation in Spain the government has agreed to offer support to families wishing to find the remains of their loved ones killed during the country's brutal civil war of the 1930s. For Assignment, Mike Williams travels to Spain to visit an exhumation of bodies and asks if the government's attempt to end the political silence of that period is working.
DocArchive: What Lies Beneath - Part two
2008.8.29 Win Scutt finds out how the maritime treasure hunting industry has boomed in recent years.
DocArchive: The Presidential Contenders - Part Two
2008.9.1 John McCain: a profile of the man who talks of honour and patriotic duty and admits having a legendary short fuse.
DocArchive: Feeding Haiti: Assignment
2008.9.4 Haiti, one of the very poorest countries in the world, has been hit hard by soaring food prices. Earlier this year riots led to the sacking of the prime minister. In Assignment, Orin Gordon looks at the ongoing struggle for Haitians to feed themselves.
DocArchive: The 66 Club
2008.9.4 Ruth Evans tells the extraordinary story of 11 women brought together on the internet by one man's sperm.