Throng

Friday, November 27 on 4

Unreported World travels to Israel to reveal how the rapid growth of Jewish "fundamentalists" is creating tension within Israeli society and endangering any negotiations on a peace deal with the Palestinians. Reporter Evan Williams and director Alex Nott visit the Mea Sharim district of Jerusalem, the heartland of ultra-Orthodox Jews known as the Haredi, or "those who fear God".

Friday, November 20 on 4

Unreported World reveals shocking evidence that Burmese refugees fleeing the country's brutal military regime are being detained and then allegedly sold by Malaysian immigration officials to Thai human traffickers. Reporter Aidan Hartley and director George Waldrum travel to Kuala Lumpur to highlight how the refugees can end up on a horrific journey into the trafficking network, where men, women and children disappear into a world of slavery and prostitution.

Friday, November 13 on 4

Unreported World highlights the tragic plight of Nepal's child widows, some of whom are as young as thirteen. Many face abuse and servitude for the rest of their lives, ostracised by their families and communities, and are often forced to sell their bodies to provide food and shelter for themselves and their children.

Friday, October 30 on 4

Unreported World travels to the European Union's eastern border, to the illicit crossing points for hundreds of thousands of Afghans making their way to our shores. Reporter Jenny Kleeman and director Jacob White follow migrants on the dangerous eight-mile crossing from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos, before gaining rare access to Pagani detention centre on the island. The team follows the migrants to Athens, where they witness the squalor in which they live and hear allegations of police violence against these desperate and determined people, who, it's clear, will stop at nothing for a chance to start a new life in Europe.

Friday, October 23 on 4

Unreported World travels to Guatemala City, where bus drivers are being murdered at a rate of one every other day as part of a campaign of extortion that threatens to bring the city to its knees. Extortion is the main source of income for Guatemala's criminal gangs, earning them millions of dollars a year, and the drivers are killed to instil fear as the gangs maintain their grip on the city. The two main gangs in Guatemala, Mara Salvatrucha and Gang 18, have evolved into highly organised criminal networks, which infiltrate the bus companies in order to protect their interests.

Friday, October 16 on 4

Unreported World reveals how Liberia is facing a child rape crisis. Six years after the end of a brutal civil war in which rape was routinely used as a weapon, children still face the daily fear of being attacked, and the west African country's hospitals are overwhelmed with child victims - a quarter of them under four years of age. Reporter Jenny Kleeman and director Matt Haan begin their disturbing journey in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.

Friday, October 9 on 4

Unreported World travels deep into the Peruvian jungle to investigate how the government's auctioning off vast tracts of the Amazon rainforest to global oil, gas and mining corporations has led to violent clashes with thousands of indigenous tribal people. Reporter Ramita Navai and director Alex Nott examine allegations of pollution and human rights abuses, and meet a woman who believes her husband was killed by the police in a revenge attack following riots. They also interview a man who says he was shot by police and that three of his friends were killed while protesting.

Friday, September 25 on 4

Channel 4's critically acclaimed foreign affairs strand returns for a new series with a film uncovering the largely hidden, but bloody, conflict in the Russian Republic of Ingushetia. In a country to which few Western journalists have been able get access, Unreported World reveals allegations that hundreds of innocent civilians are disappearing and being tortured and murdered by the security forces in an increasingly violent campaign that threatens to turn into the next Chechnya.

Aidan Hartley reveals a vision of hell in northeast India, where the earth is literally on fire as vast subterranean coal fires burn out of control beneath towns and villages, children mine coal day in day out, and half a million people are being moved out of their ancestral villages to make way for the coal mines fuelling India's growth. Everywhere the team travels in Jharia the fires are burning. The effect that India's reliance on coal could have on climate change in the future is causing global concern. But, here on the ground, it's clear that for locals, a nightmarish existence is already a reality.

Unreported World travels to the remote Chinese-North Korean border, where few journalists have ever set foot. The team reports on the plight of thousands of North Korean women who have been forced into prostitution or sold as brides after fleeing persecution and starvation in one of the most secretive and repressive regimes in the world. But the women regard this as the lesser of two evils because if they are caught and rounded up, they face being sent back to forced labour camps for interrogation, torture or even public execution.

Haiti hit the headlines last year when it was hit by yet another hurricane. Unreported World returns to the island to find that it's still in a state of emergency. Locked in a vicious cycle of environmental disaster, hunger, poverty and reliance on international aid, it's perhaps the most extreme example of what is happening to many of the world's poorest countries. Globalisation's bitter result for Haiti is that not only is local food production inadequate due to erosion and population growth, but also peasant farmers have little incentive to grow more because the USA now dominates the market.

Unreported World comes from Sierra Leone where, ten years after one of the most brutal conflicts in recent history, thousands have been left severely traumatised. Reporter Seyi Rhodes and director George Waldrum find a population that has witnessed rape, torture and public executions. The country's only psychiatrist tells Rhodes that 80 per cent of people needing help believe that mental illness is caused by evil spirits, so they turn to the church and traditional healers. With an estimated 400,000 mentally ill people in the country, offering a cure has become good business.

Unreported World travels to Turkey to investigate honour killings, which have now reached record levels with more than 200 girls and women killed in the past year alone. And in a chilling new development, reporter Ramita Navai highlights how a new law outlawing honour killings, passed as part of the Government's attempts to join the EU, may actually have led to a huge increase in girls committing suicide instead.

Venezuelans are increasingly turning to a mystical cult that worships the spirits of dead Robin Hood style gangsters as they seek supernatural protection from a crime wave that the police seem unable to contain. Unreported World joins thousands of pilgrims as they converge for a mass "spiritist" ceremony, an ancient religion that seeks the protection of local gods.

This week's Unreported World reveals how, 30 years on from the fall of the Khmer Rouge, and at the same time as Pol Pot's accomplices are put on trial for war crimes, Cambodia's people are once again being brutally driven from their land. This time, however, it is capitalism, not communism, that is displacing them as growing numbers of tourists fuel a property boom that is having devastating results.