The Documentary

*** Some viewers may find parts of this report difficult to listen to *** During Colombia’s 53-year internal conflict, around 15,000 military veterans have lived through their own bodies the heart-breaking consequences of a barbaric war. But a considerable part of that group has also sacrificed their masculinity by suffering different forms of genital or urinary trauma. Natalia Guerrero discovers the profound physical and physiological effect genital injuries can have for generations of Colombian soldiers.

Complaints that Russia interfered in America’s presidential election are only the latest chapter in a much longer story. Both Moscow and the West have engaged in political subversion over the last 100 years, in an attempt to undermine the other. This dangerous game has largely been played out in the clandestine world of spies but has burst out into the open at regular intervals.

For generations those who, for biological reasons, don't fit the usual male/female categories have faced violence and stigma in Kenya. Intersex people - as they are commonly known in Kenya - were traditionally seen as a bad omen bringing a curse upon their family and neighbours. Most were kept in hiding and many were killed at birth. But now a new generation of home-grown activists and medical experts are helping intersex people to come out into the open. They're rejecting the old idea that intersex people must be assigned a gender in infancy and stick to it and are calling on the government to instead grant them legal recognition. BBC Africa’s Health Correspondent Anne Soy meets some of the rural families struggling to find acceptance for their intersex children and witnesses the efforts health workers and activists are making to promote understanding of the condition. She also meets a successful gospel singer who recently came out as intersex and hears from those who see the campaign for inter-sex recogniti

We are getting used to the idea of people renting out their homes for holidays or using their cars as taxis, all via online sites. Perhaps the next wave is going to be hiring people – not just to do work for us, but to do the kinds of things we once expected friends and families to do. Like offering a sympathetic ear to your problems. Nina Robinson reports on some the eyebrow-raising services now available.

Giles Tremlett takes us into the fierce battles being fought over The Valle de los Caidos, an enormous memorial to Spain’s civil war dead constructed by the dictator Francisco Franco. For some a great monument, for others a war crime. Today, the battle over how Franco and the Civil War should be remembered is one of the most significant religious and political conflicts in Spain.

Getting your period in Nepal is a big deal. Menstruating women face many restrictions – they are not allowed to worship or enter the kitchen. Our young Nepali reporters Divya Shrestha and Nirmala Limbu still remember the shock at suddenly being excluded from festivities for being “impure”. Some menstruating women are banished from home for four days and have to sleep in an open hut. Such beliefs are hard to eradicate, but Divya and Nirmala find that some young women are rebelling.

**Some viewers may find parts of this report difficult to listen to** “Hiding in the bathroom. They’re trying to break down our door. We maybe have about five minutes.” Juba, capital of South Sudan, 11 July 2016. The female aid worker sending this message was among a number of international and local staff taking refuge behind a bullet proof door in the housing compound where they lived. Tensions were running high in South Sudan’s three year civil war and government troops had gone on the rampage attacking the compound. As the soldiers tried to break down the door, the terrified group frantically appealed to United Nations peacekeepers based just over a kilometer away. Using their phones and sending messages via Skype and Facebook their calls for help went unheeded.

The Faroe Islands are facing a shortage of women of marriageable age. Many of them have left and not returned so men are now travelling to South East Asia looking for love.

Joe Borelli is a New York City councilman who spoke on behalf of Donald Trump during the presidential campaign - he was thrilled when Trump won the election last November, and approached the Trump presidency with high expectations. Over the first 100 days of the Trump Administration Joe recorded his impressions of the new president, starting with a visit to the Inauguration in Washington on 20 January.

There's only one thing in life that's certain: death. Many people believe that talking about death helps us make more of life. Thousands of Death Cafés have popped up in countries across the globe, challenging people to open up about the deceased and their own thoughts and fears about dying. Cafes are often over subscribed with organisers having to turn away individuals from sell out events. Julian Keane visits some of these Death Cafés to explore if a key part of life should be preparing for death. He explores how people across the world deal with death whilst they're living, and if there's really a need for the conversation. Julian also meets sociologist Bernard Crettaz. He began the concept of Café Mortel (Death Café) at an exhibition called La mort à vivre (Death for life) in his Geneva museum. Bernard shares more about his work, the theories behind his Death Café concept and how he feels knowing the world is embracing his concept.

Young stars of social media share lessons in life from their grandmothers. What happens when the youth-dominated, image-obsessed world of social media gets a dose of hard-learnt life-advice from older women? The BBC's #GrannyWisdom week will see stars of Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook posting conversations with their grandmothers, getting their wisdom on topics from love to mental health to overcoming adversity. Featuring highlights from those social media posts as well as discussions between the social media stars about what they learned from the older generation, this programme explores the lessons, tensions and reaction to this big, global social media experiment. Presented by YouTuber Hannah Witton, with contributions from social media stars Ross Smith, Taty Ferreira, Anushree Fadnavis, Megan Gilbride, Steven Chikosi and Kubra Sait. Also listen out for Hannah's, Ross's and Anushree's grannies.

Cuba’s biotech industry is booming. And in a revolutionary first, its lung cancer treatment is being trialled in the US. So with limited resources, how has Cuba done it?

Since the beginning of time, man has lived in awe and fear of death, and every culture has faced its mystery through intricate and often ancient rituals. Few, however, are as extreme as those of the Torajan people on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Here, the dead are a constant presence, with corpses often kept in family homes for many years. When funerals are eventually held, they don’t mean goodbye. Once every couple of years, the dead are dug back out for a big family reunion.

From childhood to old age, a journey through life reflected in the mirror - via a series of interviews recorded with people as they confront their reflection. What do they see? How has their face changed? What stories lie behind the wrinkles and scars? We hear the initial wonder of the small child give way to the embarrassment of the teenager and the acceptance of later-life. Created by multi-award-winning documentary-maker, Cathy FitzGerald, this moving programme hops from home to home in contemporary Britain, catching its subjects in bedrooms and bathrooms and lounges, to hold up a mirror to the ageing process itself.Image: A face in a mirror, Credit: Getty Images

Afghanistan, strategically located between South, Central and West Asia has been invaded and fought over by the world’s superpowers for centuries. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British Empire, the Soviet Union have all tried and failed to control Afghanistan. And war rages in the country today: the US-led military coalition has been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, and conflict has become the longest war in US history.Dawood Azami talks to the British, Russian, American and Afghan fighters and soldiers who fought in what some historians have called the Graveyard of Empires. He finds out what drew them to this formidable battlefield, what they found there, how they view their enemy and how their experience changed them as soldiers and as individuals. Azami looks for patterns in history: the British fought three wars in Afghanistan in the 19th and 20th Century before they sent in troops after 2001. Some of the British servicemen were aware of their predecessor’s defeats as they came up against stiff

From internal barriers to border fences, do walls built for political purposes create bigger problems than they solve? And what is it like to live next to them, asks Cathy Gormley-Heenan, of Ulster University. She meets residents and experts in Belfast, Israel-West Bank, and on the US-Mexican border, to find out why we are still building walls and what impact they have.

Lucy Ash meets the young Russians taking death-defying photos on top of skyscrapers to gain internet fame and explores why this is a particularly Russian phenomenon.

This is an affectionate portrait of Elizabeth Gathoni Koinange - a woman who lives a short drive outside Nairobi - and who celebrated her 117th birthday this year. Her story, and that of her family, is told by Elizabeth's own great granddaughter Priscilla Ng'ethe. The joy of family life is captured when many generations come together. But it is also a short mental journey to the past and more turbulent times, when the British were rounding up suspected Mau Mau independence rebels.

What accounts for Marine Le Pen's popularity? As a populist wave sweeps across the Western world, France is emerging as a key battleground and she is scoring record ratings for a leader of an 'outsider' party and looks set to get through to the second round of the presidential elections. How much is it to do with an increasingly familiar politics which blames global elites and immigrants for economic and social woes? And how much is it a distinctively French form, mixing policies of the left and the right in a brew which harks back to previous generations of Gallic leaders? What turns a party previously seen as fascist into one seriously vying for the highest office in the land? Anand Menon examines how Marine Le Pen has detoxified her father's party and asks what its success says about France's future as one of two anchoring states of the EU.

Nearly half of all peace agreements fail. What can be done to stop countries from sliding back into civil war? Sri Lanka and Uganda are two countries that have suffered long and brutal civil wars, but have managed, to keep the peace - at least so far. BBC foreign affairs correspondent, Mike Thomson, who has reported from many conflict zones around the world, investigates how well both countries have managed to heal the wounds of war and what their experiences can teach us about winning the peace.