Unreported World - Season 22 / Year 2021

A report from Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, as young protestors risk everything to defy the military junta's coup. As the death toll in the city mounts, cameras witness the early optimism and hope of a protest movement disintegrate as the security services launch a brutal crackdown on unarmed civilians. The Myanmar government says it is responding to protests that harm the stability of the nation, using non-lethal force. However, as pressure to release political prisoners and journalists intensifies, so does the bloody crackdown.

Violent hurricanes and severe drought have decimated once fertile areas of Central America, with the region's rural poor worst affected. Hunger and child malnourishment is widespread, prompting an exodus of migrants to the United States. Reporter Guillermo Galdos tracks the journey of Gonzalo, who desperate to give his family a better life, risks his own by employing a network of people smugglers to illegally enter the US. The film reveals how climate migrants have become a valuable commodity in a booming trade and in a region controlled by crime cartels, some are paying the ultimate price.

The battle to save Thailand's wild tigers from poachers and smugglers, who have made millions from their sinister and sometimes deadly trade. Reporter Jonathan Miller travels to the last safe haven of the near-extinct Indochinese tiger and meets the rangers and conservationists fighting to protect the endangered tiger. Thai wildlife enforcement agencies are determined to crack down on the illegal trade in both live and dead tigers. However, they are struggling against a lucrative and murky industry that supplies an insatiable demand from Vietnam and China for trophies and quack medicine.

In the city that never sleeps, Krishnan Guru-Murthy explores New York's epidemic of homelessness, made worse by Covid, race inequality and alleged profiteering

The brides and grooms defying the jihadist militants laying siege to the city of Maiduguri in Nigeria, spiritual home of Boko Haram, a terrorist group at the centre of an insurgency that has killed over 36,000 people and displaced more than two million. With Covid lockdowns over and the militants driven out to north-eastern Nigeria, Yousra Elbagir discovers a city determined to reclaim the joy of weddings despite the ongoing risk of kidnappings and attacks. The reporter hears stories of loss and desperation, but also meets the residents determined to repair mental scars and rebuild Maiduguri for its people.

Seyi Rhodes reports on the migrants being beaten back from the European Union by border guards on the notorious Balkan Route. A once-welcoming Europe is now closing its doors, and Serbia has become a bottleneck for thousands of people trying to get through the increasingly hostile route. Rhodes meets beaten and bruised men trying to leave Serbia, and witnesses the families living in government camps too frightened to make the journey. He also hears how the animosity is fuelling a small but growing right-wing political movement.

In Chiapas, one of the poorest states in Mexico, Coca-Cola is king. Residents in the state drink on average 821 litres a year, almost 16 litres a week, five times the national average. Reporter Guillermo Galdos travels to San Cristobal to meet one family who sell the beverage, but are experiencing first-hand the consequences of a sugary lifestyle. Blighted by ill-health, they rely on Coca-Cola for an income. Galdos investigates the region's growing diabetes crisis, where the deadly combination of Covid and sugar is sending people to early graves.

The indigenous women going missing without a trace in the wilderness of the United States. As reporter Ayshah Tull discovers, often confusion over jurisdictions between federal, state and tribal authorities can mean that many police investigations become cold cases that are never solved. She follows the enquiries of an indigenous woman-turned-private investigator, known as a Sahnish Scout, who introduces her to a murky world of homelessness, drug addiction and alleged domestic violence in a community where indigenous women are thought to be murdered at a rate 10 times higher than the national average.

Reporter Minnie Stephenson meets the young female surfers riding the waves of change, seeking new roles in Senegal, a predominantly Muslim state going through changes

Reporter Minnie Stephenson meets the young female surfers riding the waves of change, seeking new roles in Senegal, a predominantly Muslim state going through changes