The Documentary

Now that China has ended its One Child policy, one group of state employees may soon be out of a job – the country’s hated population police. Hundreds of thousands of officers used to hunt down families suspected of violating the country’s draconian rules on child bearing, handing out crippling fines, confiscating property and sometimes forcing women to have abortions. But with an eye on improving child welfare in the countryside, there is a plan to redeploy many of these officers as child development specialists. Lucy Ash visits a pilot project in Shaanxi Province training former enforcers to offer advice and support to rural grandparents who are left rearing children while the parents migrate to jobs in the big cities. If successful, the scheme could be rolled out nationwide to redeploy an army of family planning workers and transform the life prospects of millions of rural children.

For some Rudolf Kastner is a hero, for others a traitor. The story began in Nazi occupied Hungary in 1944. At the time Kastner, a lawyer and a journalist, was deputy chairman of the Relief and Rescue Committee. He negotiated with Adolf Eichmann to save Jewish lives but did he pay for them with other Jewish lives?

Helena Kennedy looks at the philosophical foundations of the Universal Declaration, the founding document of all human rights discourse.

In 1994 apartheid ended in South Africa and Nelson Mandela was elected president. He promised in his inauguration speech to “build a society in which all South Africans will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts ... a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.” These promises were enshrined in South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution, the first in the world to outlaw all forms of discrimination. In 1994 Motshidisi Pascalina Melamu was born, making her one of the first of the so-called ‘born free generation’. Pasca, as she was known, dreamed of becoming a politician, and studied hard at school. She loved singing, dancing and football. And girls - Pasca was a lesbian.In December last year, Pasca’s body was found in a field. She had been beaten and mutilated. She was one of three LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex) people murdered in a six-week period last year. Hate crimes against the LGBTI community have long been a problem in South Africa, and the government has

BBC presenter Nkem Ifejika cannot speak Igbo the language of his forefathers. He wants to know why he was never taught Igbo as a child and travels to the Igbo heartland in the south-east of Nigeria to explore the demise of a once proud language. He discovers that recent history has had profound effects on Igbo culture and identity. He discovers too that some Igbos are seeking to reassert their language and culture.

In communities around the globe, non-binary people are rejecting the categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’, and attempting to redefine gender identity. Linda Pressly hears stories from activists who are part of this contemporary movement, and from those trying to live free from the constraints of the expectations of gender.

Farhana Haider enters Dhaka, in Bangladesh to meet a group of teenage girls who were married and then abandoned by their husbands before they even reached the age of 16.

Chloe Hadjimatheou tells the astonishing story of a group of young men from Raqqa in Syria who chose to resist the so-called ‘Islamic State’, which occupied their city in 2014 and made it the capital of their ‘Caliphate’. These extraordinary activists have risked everything to oppose ISIS; several have been killed, or had family members murdered. IS has put a bounty on the resistance leaders’ heads forcing them to go into hiding. But the group continues its work, under the banner ‘Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently’. Chloe meets the group’s founders, who are now organising undercover activists in Raqqa from the relative safety of other countries. Producer: Rob Walker Editor: Richard Knight

To salute the 90th birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, David Cannadine, eminent professor of History at Princeton University explores the worldwide role and significance of the British monarchy.

Emily Thomas explores what our secrets tell us about who we are, and what happens when we reveal them. Now that it is easy to go online and tell strangers anything anonymously, are we more or less likely to confide in the people around us? She explores the link between identity and secret-keeping and asks how much of our identity is what we keep hidden.

In the chaotic city of Kolkata in India, Catherine Carr hears from the feminist Shakespeare enthusiast to the man dying of AIDS and the woman still a little bit in love with her colleague; from the father and son begging by the roadside to the teenager dreaming of Olympic success. The brief portraits have been woven together with the sounds of the city, to create an unpredictable and poetic experience of Kolkata. This series, part of the Identity series, invites strangers to pause on their way from A to B and asks them one simple question: ‘Where Are You Going?’ The encounters reveal funny, moving, poignant and sometimes astonishing details about the lives of others. Image: Ayushi, a student at Kolkata's Presidence University. Credit: Peter Jay

Norway's widely regarded as one of the world's most progressive societies, yet it's at the centre of an international storm over its child protection policies. Campaigners accuse its social workers of removing children - some from immigrant backgrounds - from their parents without justification, and permanently erasing family bonds. Tim Whewell meets parents who say they've lost their children because of misunderstood remarks or "insufficient eye contact" - and Norwegian professionals who call the system monstrous and dysfunctional. Is a service designed to put children first now out of control?

Justine Lang embarks on a journey to find out why women in India sacrifice their natural hair and why an increasing number of South African women want to buy it.

Many black people in Mexico’s remote Costa Chica area near the Pacific ocean feel ignored and neglected by the state. A lot of Mexicans don’t even know the Afro-Mexicans exist. Outside their towns, they often get stopped by police who don’t believe they can be Mexican. Some have even been deported, despite having Mexican ID papers. So who are the black Mexicans? Lucy Duran meets members of this ethnic community that is struggling for identity and recognition. They use their culture, such as the characteristic Dance of the Devils or Chilena music, to assert their identity and fight for their rights. Activists want the state to accept black people as a separate ethnic minority, distinct from indigenous people, but with the same rights. It is not only about being able to hold your head high. It’s also about money. Those fighting for official recognition say that they’re not eligible for the special kind of financial support that similarly isolated indigenous communities get. They blame their poverty on this lack

Everything is up for discussion in the salon, where intimate and frank conversations take place between a woman and her hairstylist. Whether you view a haircut as a luxury or a necessity, a hair salon is at the frontline of how we think about female identity. Six journalists from around the world pay visits to salons across the world, from Tokyo to Johannesburg to Beirut and back. We’ll hear how women view issues of race, class, wealth, sexuality and beauty through the hair on their heads. Step inside the salon, where every haircut tells a story.

This week's massive leak of confidential documents from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, has given unprecedented access to the way the rich and powerful have used tax havens to hide their wealth. But within the eleven and a half million documents, there is also evidence of how some of the shell companies set up by the firm, or the individuals that owned them, have been the subject of international sanctions and have been used by rogue states and oppressive regimes including North Korea and Syria. Simon Cox reveals details from the leaked papers and travels to the British Virgin Islands where a small office run by Mossack Fonseca was used to create more than 100,000 companies. One of them was a front for a North Korean Bank that was later sanctioned by the United States for supporting the regime's illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programme. According to the US, the BVI based front company managed millions of dollars in transactions in support of North Korea. Other companies set up by on the isl

The so-called Islamic State has brought terror to the streets of Paris and Brussels, killing hundreds of civilians and wounding many more. But how does the organisation operate in Europe? And who has masterminded the deadly attacks?The mastermind of the attacks in the French capital was a man called Abdelhamid Abaaoud. During the course of the programme Peter Taylor unveils how this man recruited and trained radicalised young men to carry out attacks. And he also details how the western intelligence services were engaged in a desperate race to stop Abaaoud from bringing terror to streets of Europe.

In answer to the question, we hear from the father and son who share a passion for firearms, a nursery worker whose chances of having a baby have slipped away; a father whose child’s funeral was a like a festival, and one of the last hippies in Amsterdam. These brief portraits have been woven together with the sounds of Amsterdam, to create an unpredictable and poetic listen.

One question - Where are you going? - yields countless surprises about the lives of strangers. We hear from a pigeon-catching drug addict, a woman who is married to her cat, a man dicing with death in his day job and a mother who is travelling to see her daughter who has cancer. "It's not supposed to be that way round" she says. These unpredictable encounters come together to create a unique and fascinating audio portrait of New York City.

How are the ethics, philosophy and lifestyles of the internet pioneers determining the way we all live? Do we have any choice but to live the way they live, or rage against what? The machine? David Baker travels to Silicon Valley to find out what shapes those who are shaping the way we live.