Crossing Continents
Stories from around the world and the people at the heart of them.
- Update frequency
- every 7 days
- Average duration
- 28 minutes
- Episodes
- 392
- Years Active
- 2010 - 2025
Romario Tackles Brazil
Brazil is getting ready to host the 2014 World Cup. But the preparations have become marred in controversy. And leading the charge against over-budget stadiums, vested interests and corruption is an …
Return to Ghana's Oil City
Two and a half years ago, oil started flowing from Ghana's first commercial offshore oilfield. Shortly after the taps were turned on, Rob Walker visited the hub for the new industry: the once sleepy …
Hazaras, Hatred and Pakistan
Mobeen Azhar travels to the Pakistani city of Quetta to investigate how it has become the scene of violent and indiscriminate attacks by Sunni militants against the local ethnic Hazara community. It'…
Belarus's university in exile
Belarus has been described as the last dictatorship in Europe. Few dare speak out against President Alexander Lukashenko and his ruling elite. But the opposition has found a way of making its voice h…
Mexico's Village Vigilantes
Insecurity dominates the lives of millions of Mexicans, who are caught between the murderous drug cartels and absent or corrupt law enforcement. So, communities have begun to take the law into their …
Ukraine's HIV battle
Twelve years ago Lucy Ash investigated Ukraine's fight against HIV infection, which was mainly caused by injecting drug users. After the Orange Revolution in late 2004, the government promised to do …
Nepal: Getting Away with Murder
The fate of hundreds of people who went missing during Nepal's brutal civil war is threatening to undermine the country's fragile democracy. Around 100,000 people were displaced during the bloody ins…
Mongolia's Mining Boom
The Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia's freezing Gobi Desert is one of the the world's biggest - extracting a vast seam of copper, gold and silver the size of Manhattan. It's turned this country of camel a…
Trafficking girls in India
In a major investigation, Natalia Antelava reports on the abduction of tens of thousands of young girls in India for forced marriages. Thousands more are sold as prostitutes and domestic servants. Sh…
Forced Confessions in Japan
Mariko Oi investigates forced confessions of suspects in the Japanese criminal justice system. She asks if the use of prolonged questioning and other dubious tactics by police and prosecutors might b…
Burma
Lucy Ash asks what the explosion in popular protest over a Chinese-backed copper mine says about changes in Burma and asks if this is a test case for the government's commitment to democratic reforms…
Poland's New Immigrants
For decades, Poland has been a country of emigrants travelling to build new lives abroad, not least in the UK. But could things be about to change? Paul Henley travels to the country at the eastern e…
Libya: Life after the Revolution
The city of Misrata arguably suffered the most during the Libyan conflict as missiles rained on it for months on end. By the end of the revolution though, fighters from Misrata had exacted their reve…
Sexual Abuse in US Prisons
Linda Pressly investigates why rape and sexual abuse is so common in America's huge prison system - and asks if new measures to fight it will succeed. Producer: Helen Grady.
The Mystery of South Africa's Missing Textbooks
Many schoolchildren in South Africa's northern Limpopo province have gone for months without school textbooks. There was money to buy them. There was also a contract to deliver the books. Yet they di…
El Salvador's Gang Truce
In one of the most violent countries on earth, peace has broken out. In March, a truce was brokered between El Salvador's two most violent street gangs; they agreed to stop killing each other.
The Ma…
The Mayor of Mogadishu
Andrew Harding meets the Mayor with the job of running Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. Can the man nicknamed "Tarzan" tackle mass corruption and the physical and psychological impact of years of brutal…
Israel's New Front Line
When Israel was established, its tiny community of ultra-Orthodox Jews were, uniquely, exempted from the normal requirement of service in the Israeli Defence Force. They were seen as keepers of the s…
Gold and Governance in Romania
Tessa Dunlop travels to Romania to investigate why a proposed open-cast gold mine has caused the longest-lasting political storm in the country since the end of Communism.
The mine, in the rural comm…
Bulgaria's Criminal Football
No fewer than 15 football club bosses have been murdered in Bulgaria's top football league in the last decade alone. In this edition of Crossing Continents Margot Dunne investigates reports that many…