Perspective

The UN estimates that there are at least 82.4 million people around the world who have been forced to leave their homes. The situation has also been made worse by the Taliban's takeover in Afghanistan. In today’s Perspective, we spoke to Alice Barbe and Fatemeh Jailani of SINGA, a citizen movement that aims to build bridges between refugees and their host countries and communities.

Several years after the Colombian government signed its historic peace deal with Farc rebels, photojournalist Emilienne Malfatto went to the country to investigate the increasingly common murders of Colombian social leaders.

According to the World Health Organization, access to healthcare in Chad is still at an embryonic stage. The country has limited data on cancer and no department dedicated to its care, meaning those who are diagnosed are often referred to hospitals abroad. But Jean-Bosco Ndihokubwayo, the WHO's representative to Chad, is optimistic about the country's political will to fight cancer, as authorities plans to build a national treatment centre.

Today she is one of the leading voices resisting the military takeover in Myanmar, but Thinzar Shunlei Yi, the daughter of an army officer, spent the first 16 years of her life on military compounds. When she discovered the world outside, she felt a responsibility to use her status to fight for others. Thinzar Shunlei Yi has been in hiding since the military cracked down on pro-democracy protesters last spring. While she continues to expose herself by speaking out against the junta, she says that what she risks is nothing compared to the people losing their lives on the ground.

Last week, Poland's constitutional court ruled that Polish laws have supremacy over those of the EU in areas where they clash. There are concerns that the country could now effectively could be forced into a "Polexit" out of the EU as it is no longer playing by the bloc's rules. On Sunday, large demonstrations in support of Polish EU membership took place across Poland and abroad, a sign of Poles' enthusiasm for the European project. We spoke to Laurent Pech, head of the law and politics department at Middlesex University in London. He called last week's bombshell court decision "a nuclear strike on the EU legal order".

Russia continues to court far-right parties in Europe as a means to destabilise more liberal Western democracies: That is the premise of a new book, “Russia and the Western Far Right - Tango Noir,” written by Anton Shekhovtsov.  He joined us to discuss the book and his decision to put a photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin with France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen on the cover.

Candid and professional: That was the description by the US of its first face-to-face meeting this weekend with senior Taliban officials since the group took over in Afghanistan. The meeting came just ahead of a G20 summit this week to discuss the latest in that country. It has been less than two months since the Taliban took control and there are already signs of instability in the nation, including an attack on a mosque last week that killed more than 60 people.  We speak to former war correspondent Olivier Weber.

Citizen engagement, entrepreneurship and innovation, higher education, culture and sport are the main talking points at this week's Africa-France summit in the southern French city of Montpellier. No heads of state or prime ministers from the continent have been invited, but rather a whole host of young entrepreneurs, artists and civil society members. In Perspective, we spoke to Nathaniel Powell, an Honorary Researcher at the Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University. His research has centred on the relationship between France and Africa in the post-colonial era, with a particular focus on French security policy.

In today's Perspective, we spoke to Serge Stroobants, the Director of Operations for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa at the Institute for Economics and Peace. The think tank is releasing the second edition of its Ecological Threat Report, a study that looks at 99.9 percent of the world's population and examines threats linked to food, water, temperature change, demographic shifts and natural disasters. He called for a "systemic approach" to dealing with ecological threats, given the "intimate relationship" between ecological degradation and conflict.

Defenders of capitalism argue that it's conducive to creating wealth, encouraging innovation and promoting individual freedoms. Advocates for socialism counter that it reduces inequality and improves access to basic rights such as health and education. But what about the effects of these systems on sex? In her book, "Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism”, Prof. Kristen Ghodsee says socialist policies improve women’s economic independence... and their sex lives. She joined us on Perspective.