The Documentary: Archive 2014

How Manchester helped shape the modern age. Communism, free trade, the co-operative movement, the campaign for female suffrage, European vegetarianism and trade unionism all originated or - crucially - were developed in the northern UK city.

Can a unique friendship between two men of god end the killings in the Central African Republic? Tim Whewell investigates.

The history of the Arab world, including Egypt's 19th Century encounters with Europe and the cultural renaissance known as Nahda.

How does being on a map affect your work, education and rights? Meet the The volunteers who are mapping the world's unmapped places and people - in the aftermath of natural disasters, and in areas of political unrest and civil war.

The story of Capt Mbaye Diagne, one of the unsung heroes of Rwanda’s genocide. Working as a Senegalese UN peacekeeper, he saved the children of murdered Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and many more. Mark Doyle travels to Rwanda, Senegal and Canada to meet the people who knew Mbaye Diagne.

How can an airplane go missing in the 21st Century and why - nearly a month after it disappeared - we are apparently no nearer to solving the mystery of what happened to flight MH370?

Lucy Ash talks to the Ukrainian volunteers and activists who are painstakingly restoring a stash of documents dumped in a lake on the abandoned estate of ex-president Yanukovich.

Hacking, security, encryption: Gordon Corera explores the history of the war between governments and geeks to control computer cryptography.

Sarah Montague turns her attention to universities, in particular, to MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Some argue that these free university online courses, presented by some of the best professors in the world, could - in cash strapped times - be the saviour of higher education and take university to people in some of the remotest regions of the world. Others argue they could destroy centuries of tradition.

Mustapha Mohammed meets Nigerian boys who have to work to support their families in the northern city of Kano. It's a heavy burden for them, and they pay a high personal price.

In 1983 at the height of the deprivations and repression of Nicolae Ceausescu's communist regime in Romania, a man called Ion Bugan made a solitary protest against the system. His daughter, the poet and writer Carmen Bugan, describes what happened next.

Each year, thousands of Latin American migrants illegally cross the US border via a treacherous journey, walking for days across the Arizona desert. Some succeed, others are deported, while many drop dead from exhaustion. The BBC's Mexico Correspondent Will Grant travels to Tucson, Arizona, to meet the team behind The Missing Migrant Project, which works to identify the remains of the dead and, ultimately, return them to their family.

More gun deaths are due to suicide than homicide in the US. But what happens to the fiancée left behind, to friends and to the law enforcement officers involved? And, in the wake of the Clackamas mall shooting, we hear from people about their fear of violence, rational or not, that drives the fierce opposition to gun control.

Tim Whewell travels to the Turkish border and to Lebanon to talk to the doctors and health care workers struggling to cope with a growing crisis.

Monica Vasconcelos reports that fifty years after the coup, Brazil has started to deal with the legacy of the military dictatorship. But why are some people still afraid?

Under apartheid in South Africa, stand-up comedy was exclusively the domain of white performers. But now comics like David Kau and Riaad Moosa are challenging that dominance with their witty takes on the complexities and divides of their society.

Young women lack the same opportunities as men, despite most countries legislating against discrimination. What is standing in the way of girls achieving equality?

The BBC’s Valeria Perasso is on the US border, exploring the journey taken by Mexican deportees as they pass through the security fence, back home.

Does 'paid media' threaten democracy? Shilpa Kannan investigates corruption in India where there are 250 radio stations, 850 TV channels and 93,000 newspapers and magazines.

Catherine Carr charts the course of one day in the lives of many people, making many different journeys across the globe. By simply asking "Where are you going", she unearths the painful, the poignant and the downright bizarre.