Unreported World

Channel 4's multi-award-winning Unreported World returns for its 33rd series with an eye-opening episode from Peru, exposing the callous and illegal wildlife trade in the Amazon jungle. Animal trafficking is a global trade that's seen an unprecedented spike in recent years, threatening dozens of species with extinction. Reporter Ade Adepitan and director Will West travel to the remote city of Iquitos, where they use undercover filming to reveal the shocking scale and the brazen nature of backstreet dealers and market traders selling protected wildlife for bush meat and the international trade.

Unreported World meets some of Russia's most prolific parents and investigates a wave of intolerance sweeping the country. The resurgent Russian Orthodox Church is at the forefront of a new movement combining religion and nationalism. In Rostov on Don, Marcel Theroux and Jessica Kelly meet an Orthodox family with 18 children who have received medals from the government and cash from some of the country's richest people, who are keen to associate with the values that President Putin is promoting: family, God and country. And in Moscow the team investigates the darker side of this resurgent religion and nationalism: a wave of intolerance. Theroux meets Konstantin Malofeev, a millionaire banker with Kremlin connections and the founder of new television station Tsargrad TV, which broadcasts nationalist material and features anti-abortion and homophobic speakers.

The USA is in the grip of an illiteracy crisis, with nearly one in five adults now unable to read. Reporter Kiki King and director Jessica Kelly visit Detroit, a city where two thirds of high school students struggle with basic reading and where things have got so bad that a group of high school students are suing the state of Michigan for failing to teach them adequately.

Unreported World travels to Lebanon where an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees have fled the war. Reporter Shaunagh Connaire and director Andrew Carter reveal that, despite offers of assistance from the international community, some of those most in need - refugee children with serious medical conditions - are suffering and dying while they wait for help. The UK, other European countries and the US have promised to help the most vulnerable children and resettle them. However, Unreported World discovers that there are limits - on medical grounds - as to who is being accepted on some of these schemes, resulting in some of the sickest children and their families being left stranded.

It's a year since decades of military dictatorship came to an end in Myanmar and Aung San Suu Kyi began leading a new era of civilian government. But the woman hailed around the world is now being criticised for failing to bring real freedoms to many in the country, and the fighting against various rebel groups has intensified. Krishnan Guru-Murthy and director Karim Shah travel to the country to investigate whether its fledgling democracy is already under attack.

Correspondent Seyi Rhodes and director Kate Hardie-Buckley report from the set of the hit South Korean TV show that's made defectors from North Korea into TV stars. Now on My Way to Meet You mixes showbiz entertainment and shocking personal testimony, with South Korean celebrities quizzing the defectors on what life's like across the border. More than 400 defectors have been interviewed on the show. Their stories chart the very latest about life in North Korea under Kim Jong-un and for many South Koreans it's become a major source of information about their northern neighbour. Rhodes meets 26-year-old Eunhee Park, who's become one of the show's stars, and recently arrived 25-year-old Suuyeoung Lee, who's about to make her first appearance on the show. Their stories help lift the lid on what life's currently like in North Korea.

Unreported World reporter Sophie Morgan and director Patrick Wells visit the Samoan islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to investigate an epidemic of obesity. American Samoa has the highest rates of obesity in the world: up to 93% of people are overweight or obese and one in three have diabetes. Samoa is not far behind. The governments of Samoa and American Samoa are trying to tackle the crisis but both remote Islands are still being flooded with unhealthy processed food from abroad, as well as fatty offcuts of meat that are seen as unfit for human consumption in many other countries.

Reporter Seyi Rhodes and director Jessica Kelly are in Senegal to explore the national obsession with competitive wrestling. It's one of Senegal's fastest growing sports and offers young men the opportunity to earn big money in a country battling poverty and unemployment. Unreported World meets some of the superstar wrestlers treated like gods and worshipped by entire neighbourhoods, as well as up-and-coming fighters pushing their bodies to the limits in the hope of making enough money to support their families.

China's aspiring musicians are global citizens, inspired by US hip-hop, British punk and the slick routines of Korean pop. But as reporter Marcel Theroux and director Sarah Collinson reveal, they face the special challenges of working under increasing censorship and a deeply authoritarian government.

As the Republic of Ireland prepares for a referendum on whether to alter legislation that makes abortion illegal in almost all circumstances, reporter Shaunagh Connaire and director Kate Hardie-Buckley meet women and families on both sides of the debate, and document the dilemmas medical staff face working under the current laws, in this moving and powerful episode.

In a summer of hurricanes and floods around the world, the incident that has taken most lives has been little reported. On 14 August, torrential rain triggered a huge mudslide that destroyed the small town of Regent on the outskirts of Sierra Leone's capital Freetown. Some estimates put the number of dead at over 1000, and the difficulties in recovering bodies means that the true figure may never be known. Reporter Seyi Rhodes travelled to the country just days after the mudslide, witnessing the terrible destruction and spending time with the survivors and rescue teams as he investigated the causes and devastating results of this natural disaster. His report provides a moving, first-hand perspective from the people whose families and homes have been torn apart.

India has long struggled with religious violence, but in recent months the problem has taken a gruesome new form. Across the country, gangs of Hindu men have lynched Muslims who they accuse of killing cows or eating beef. Known as cow vigilantes, in some instances mobs have killed or injured more than 150 people since 2015. India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has made a plea for calm, but 2017 is set to be the worst year for attacks to date. Reporter Mirren Gidda meets a group of vigilantes, unconnected to any killings, who take her on one of their nightly hunts for people who may be harming cows. She also meets Muslim families who've lost loved ones to the mobs, among them a mother whose 16-year-old son was stabbed to death. Her report is an emotional account of the tensions and violence spreading across India, and provides a detailed look at why the vigilantes do what they do.

Reporter Ade Adepitan and director Eric McFarland travel to Tanzania, where 400 women died in witch-hunts last year, twice as many as in the year before. Many others were attacked and ostracised. More people in Tanzania believe in witchcraft than anywhere else in Africa. But some people think that there's more behind recent witchcraft attacks than a fear of the supernatural.

Every year around 300,000 British tourists visit the white sand beaches and turquoise waters of Cancún, the jewel in Mexico's $20 billion tourism industry. But after a spate of brutal murders, the US government has warned travellers about the risks associated with growing violent crime in the city. Reporter Krishnan Guru-Murthy and director Patrick Wells travel to the country to investigate why the murders are taking place and whether Cancún risks going the same way as Acapulco: once the premier tourism resort in Mexico, but now one that virtually no foreigners visit.

Reporter Yousra Elbagir and director Jessica Kelly visit the Mowasah hospital in Jordan where Doctors Without Borders surgeons are offering life-changing surgery to help innocent victims of the wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It's the only hospital of its kind in the Middle East, and as well as battling their injuries, patients - many of them children or still in their teens - have had to make extraordinary journeys to get there. The Unreported World team follows their stories and investigates the challenges facing a generation who have known only war. Some are victims of Isis, but many are victims of Saudi airstrikes in Yemen and coalition airstrikes in Iraq.

Sophie Morgan reports from Australia where leaked footage of the shocking treatment of young prisoners - most of them Aboriginal teenagers - in a juvenile detention centre in the county's Northern Territory has sparked outcry and a government inquiry. Ninety-four per cent of young people held in detention centres in the Northern Territory are Aboriginal, although they make up only a quarter of the state's population. Morgan and director Simon Rawles meet one of the boys at the centre of the scandal, who reveals his harsh treatment behind bars. The team also investigates a hidden issue that makes these young prisoners' situation even more upsetting. Unreported World discovers recent evidence suggesting that as many as two fifths of these young prisoners have an intellectual disability known as foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, linked to their mothers' use of alcohol during pregnancy.