The Inquiry BBC Podcasts

The Caribbean country of Haiti has been blighted for years by groups of armed gangs, who have proved more than a match for the national police force, who have struggled to confront them.
Now as the country descends further into lawlessness, a response to Haiti’s plea for international assistance may finally be at hand, in the form of a United Nations backed multi-national security force led by Kenya and supported financially by the United States. This East African country has volunteered to lead the mission with their own elite police unit, to help Haiti’s transitional authorities restore order. But the Kenyan government’s decision to involve itself in another country’s problems has raised some questions back home about the deployment.

So, on this week’s Inquiry, we’re asking ‘Why is Kenya getting involved in Haiti?’
Contributors:
Robert Fatton Jr, Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Virginia, USA.
Dismas Mokua, Political Risk Analyst, Tricarta Advisory Limited, Nairobi, Kenya
Professor Karuti Kanyinga, University of Nairobi Institute for Development Studies, Kenya
Michelle Gavin, Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, USA
Presenter: Charmaine Cozier
Producer: Jill Collins
Researcher: Matt Toulson
Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards
Production Coordinator:Tim Fernley
Editor: Tara McDermott
Image/Credit: Haiti awaits the arrival of Kenyan led international security support mission, Port Au Prince/ORLANDO BARRIA/EPA-EFE/REX Shutterstock via BBC Images

In September 2022 a Christian pastor had a meeting with Kim Keon Hee, the first lady of South Korea, in her private residence. That meeting was recorded with a hidden camera and the film was released a year later.
What happens in the footage is not entirely clear … except that it appears to show two people - a man and a woman meeting, and one offering an expensive bagged gift to the other. This obscure video triggered a political storm so large that some say it even affected the outcome of the country’s parliamentary elections.
So what does a designer handbag say about South Korean politics?
Contributors:
Raphael Rashid, freelance Journalist based in Seoul
Sarah Son, Director of the Centre for South Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield
Jong Eun Lee, Assistant Professor of Political Science at North Greenville University in South Carolina
Andrew Yeo, Senior Fellow and South Korea Foundation Chair at the Brookings Institution
Presented by Tanya Beckett
Produced by Louise Clarke
Researched by Matt Toulson
Production Coordinator: Tim Fernley
Editor: Tara McDermott
Image Credit: Philip Fong\Getty

On the 28th of May, in a small country on the easternmost reaches of Europe, a new law came into effect.
For the vast majority of people around the world, this new ruling, in a nation of fewer than 4 million inhabitants, went largely unnoticed.
However, for many of the citizens of Georgia it marked a setback, throwing off course the country’s prospects of joining the European Union and aligning it more closely with Moscow.
This week on The Inquiry we’re asking, ‘Is Georgia turning its back on Europe?’
Contributors:
Megi Kartsivadze, DPhil student, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, and an invited lecturer at the University of Tbilisi, Georgia
Professor Stephen Jones, Director of the Program on Georgian Studies at the Davis Center at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Dr. Lia Tsuladze, Executive Director of the Center for Social Sciences and an Associate Professor of Sociology at Tbilisi State University, Georgia
Maia Nikoladze, Assistant Director in the GeoEconomics Center, Atlantic Council, Washington DC
Production team:
Presenter: Tanya Beckett
Producer: Lorna Reader
Technical Producer: Craig Boardman
Researcher: Matt Toulson
Production Coordinators: Ellie Dover & Tim Fernley
Editor: Tara McDermott
Image Credit: David Mdzinarishvili/Epa-Efe/Rex/Shutterstock

The current record holder for the world’s biggest iceberg is the A23a. Back in 1986 this colossus broke away from an Antarctic ice sheet. This process of breaking off or ‘calving’ as it is known is a natural part of the life cycle of an ice sheet. But A23a then became lodged in the Weddell Sea for more than thirty years, until four years ago a gradual melting allowed the berg to refloat.
Since then it’s been steadily on the move, heading in the same direction as Antarctic icebergs before it, towards the warm waters of the Southern Ocean, where it will eventually shrink from melting.
As it travels, the iceberg has been playing an important role on the ecological environment around it, both in positive and negative ways.
So, on this week on The Inquiry, we’re asking ‘What can the world’s biggest iceberg tell us?’
Contributors:
Dr. Catherine Walker, Glaciologist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts, USA
Dr. Oliver Marsh, Glaciologist, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK
Jemma Wadham, Professor of Glaciology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Christopher Shuman, Research Associate Professor, NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre, Maryland, USA
Presenter: William Crawley
Producer: Jill Collins
Researcher: Katie Morgan
Editor: Tara McDermott
Production Co-ordinator: Ellie Dover
Image Credit: A23a in Antarctica, Jan 2024. Rob Suisted/Reuters/via BBC Images

In February 2024, Myanmar reactivated an old law which had been on hold for 14 years, stating adult men aged up to 35, and women up to 27 years old, must serve at least two years in the country’s armed forces. The plan is to add sixty thousand new recruits annually – and anyone caught avoiding conscription faces prison and a fine.
It’s part of the military-led government’s bid to fight back in a brutal civil war, which broke out in 2021 after its coup seized power from the democratically elected party. A violent crackdown on the peaceful public protests that followed triggered widespread armed resistance and has energised other groups who are determined to end military leadership.
Myanmar is no stranger to internal unrest, but this latest conflict is pushing it closer to the edge.
This week we’re asking - Is Myanmar on the brink of collapse?
Contributors:
Tin Htar Swe, Former Editor of BBC Burmese Service & freelance Myanmar consultant
Professor Michael W. Charney, Professor of Asian and Military History, SOAS, University of London
Dr David Brenner, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Sussex
Dr Min Zaw Oo, Executive Director, Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security
Production team:
Presenter: Charmaine Cozier
Producer: Lorna Reader
Researcher: Matt Toulson
Editor: Tara McDermott
Image: A protester holds a placard with a three-finger salute in front of a military tank parked aside the street in front of the Central Bank building in Yangon, Myanmar, on 15 February 2021 (Credit: Aung Kyaw Htet/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Historically, Turkey has always had a strong women’s rights movement, stemming from the days of the Ottoman Empire through to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey into the present day.

At the top of the movement’s agenda now is the fight to protect women against violence from men. It’s three years since Turkey pulled out of the Istanbul Convention, the Europe wide treaty on combatting violence against women and girls. The Turkish Government has its own version of domestic violence law, but there are concerns that this doesn’t offer the same protection as the Convention.
Campaigners say that femicide and violence against women continues to plague society and that there is an increasingly anti-gender rhetoric within mainstream politics.
So, this week on The Inquiry, we’re asking ‘Is Turkey getting more dangerous for women?’
Contributors:
Dr. Sevgi Adak, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, The Aga Khan University.
Professor Seda Demiralp, Işık University, Turkey.
Dr. Ezel Buse Sönmezocak, International Human Rights Lawyer, Turkey
Dr. Hürcan Aslı Aksoy, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin.
Presenter: Emily Wither
Producer: Jill Collins
Researcher: Katie Morgan
Production Co-ordinator: Liam Morrey
Image credit: Cagla Gurdogan via REUTERS from BBC Images