From Our Own Correspondent

India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, announced a zero tolerance policy towards violence against women when he took office. But Rajini Vaidyanathan says that for many victims his promises ring hollow. According to the latest figures from India's National Crime Records Bureau there were 33,658 female rape victims in 2017 which means one woman was raped every 15 minutes - and those are just the official figures. Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been defending her government from accusations of genocide at the United Nation's top court in the Hague this week but Anna Holligan finds the former Nobel Peace Prize winner tight lipped when it comes to two words - rape and Rohingya. Viktor Orban's government has stopped funding for gender studies, calling them 'an ideology not a science'. The move has sent a chill down the spines of Hungarian academics says Angela Saini. In Haiti Thomas Rees tunes into the intimate and intense relationship between music, politics and protest And from the archive a memorable dispatch from the late Alex Duval Smith .... if you are worried whether your Christmas cards will arrive in time, spare a thought for Mali's most dedicated mailman who has to make deliveries in a city without postcodes.

When Russian forces took over parts of Ukraine in spring 2014, much of the world held its breath. Would Western countries side with Ukraine, and could the fighting spread further into Eastern Europe? While that kind of escalation did not happen, life in Eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed rebel forces and Ukraine’s army are still facing off, still looks something like wartime. As Jonah Fisher recently found, in this terrain, politicians, as well as soldiers, have to tread carefully. This week Democratic members of Congress accelerated their push to impeach Donald Trump. Anthony Zurcher has been watching the hearings. He has had a front-row seat as history is written, but sometimes he wonders what history might make of it. Since the early Nineties, the United Nations has held an annual conference to bring the world together to tackle the threat of climate change. This year's event in Madrid is meant to persuade the biggest polluters to rein in their emissions. But, as David Shukman reports, progress is as slow as ever. A Norwegian pensioner convicted of spying in Moscow recently returned home in a spy swap. Frode Berg’s arrest caused controversy in Norway, with criticism of the use of civilians in espionage. Sarah Rainsford met Mr Berg in Oslo, soon after his release. Prince William has just made his first visit to Kuwait. He will have found it to be a different place to what it was nearly three decades ago, when thousands died during Iraq's invasion and occupation of the country. Sumaya Bakhsh has recently visited Kuwait and discovered that, for some, a sense of loss still lingers. Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Neil Koenig

Throughout Sri Lanka's decades long conflict, attention has focused on the confrontation between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. The country’s Muslims, who are just 10 per cent of the population and see themselves as a separate ethnic group, have often been ignored. But that changed after this year's Easter Sunday attacks, carried out by a small cell of Sri Lankan Islamists, which claimed 250 lives. Since then many Muslims feel they have been demonised and ostracised. Our South Asia editor Jill McGivering has been in the main city, Colombo, to investigate. Over the past few weeks there has been a fierce crackdown by the Iranian authorities on protests across the country. The number of fatalities keeps being revised upwards, but getting precise details is tricky when the Iranian government seems determined to keep outsiders and its own citizens in the dark. As Jiyar Gol explains, even under normal conditions, BBC Persian’s journalists, who broadcast to 20 million around the world and 10 million inside the country, must resort to ingenious tactics to gather and broadcast the news. In the middle of popular unrest and a media blackout, their job is even harder. Celebrations have been taking place in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, after the transitional authorities officially dissolved the former ruling party of the deposed president, Omar al Bashir. Our former Sudan correspondent James Copnall went back to explore the changes and began in a girls' school in Khartoum. He found a new openness in almost every conversation and that newly gained freedoms have also led to a series of unprecedented street protests. Protests are back again in the Georgian capital Tbilisi as thousands demand electoral reform. Recently police used water cannons to disperse protesters picketing the parliament building. Campaigners want a switch to proportional representation which they say would ensure a more democratic multi- party parliament. Since 2012 the country’s legislature has been dominated by the governing Georgian Dream party. Rayhan Demytrie talks to those who fear that Georgia’s fragile democracy may be at risk, thanks to one man -a billionaire with a James Bond style hilltop lair. And how do you cover protests as a journalist when you are also pumping breast milk? Our South America correspondent Katy Watson needs to keep up the supply of milk for her new baby but she doesn't have an office job where she can plug a in pump and sit at a desk.

It’s now two years since Robert Mugabe was pushed out of office by the military and replaced by Emerson Mnangagwa. For many Zimbabweans economic conditions- already dire - have actually got worse. Now to add to their misery, there are water shortages and alarming evidence of the negative effect of climate change. But corruption and mismanagement have contributed to the power crisis and evening blackouts - it is no good just blaming the drought says Stephen Sackur. When the Buddha stipulated the rules for monks, he said each should only have a few possessions; an alms bowl, a water bottle, robes, a needle and thread and a razor. But now in Cambodia, within the folds of these saffron robes, there’s often a smartphone too says Sophia Smith Galer. Saudi Arabia is experiencing genuine social change - with woman ripping off their scarves at football matches, but there are still big questions over the man leading the process, Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman says Sebastian Usher. Nearly half a century after a university uprising which led to the fall of the military junta, Katy Fallon is in Athens and finds policies by Greece’s new centre right government have led to fresh clashes between students and police. And Hugh Schofield takes us to a bizarre French micro state in a castle in southern Germany - a bolt hole for Nazi collaborators at the end of World War 2.

In the latest programme of the monthly series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from journalists and writers reflecting the range of contemporary life in the United Kingdom. Dan Johnson reports direct from the flooded River Don in South Yorkshire where feelings are running high among locals about the response to the latest inundation. As the rain returns after an all-too-brief respite, he reflects on the area's carbon-generating past and the effects of climate change. In Hartlepool, the BBC's Social Affairs Correspondent, Michael Buchanan, hears from a mother and father about their twenty year-long struggle with the corrosive effects on their domestic life and their position in the local community of their sons' misuse of drugs. We visit Walthamstow in north-east London in the company of Emma Levine. She talks to customers and staff of a long-standing local daytime eatery which at night converts into a cocktail bar that attracts an entirely different clientele. Will the two businesses thrive together? BBC Cymru Wales's Garry Owen visits Parc prison in Bridgend to learn about a pioneering project designed to foster the all-important bonds between prisoners and their children. He hears what inmates - and their relatives - think of the programme and how successful it is proving to be. And Stephanie Power, who has a love-hate relationship with the UK's capital city, explains how a recent visit to London brought out the conflicted nature of her view of the metropolis. Producer: Simon Coates