Reporters

The battle for the Donbas, the eastern region of Ukraine, has become a war of attrition. Small gains are celebrated by the Russians while Ukrainian troops are now on the defensive in the region. FRANCE 24's Gwendolyne Debono travelled along the front line for this eyewitness report.

In Laos, the only country in Southeast Asia without a coastline, it's hoped a high-speed train line will help open up the country and usher in an economic boom. The 420-kilometre-long rail link takes only three hours to connect Laos's capital Vientiane with China. On the Laotian side of the border, the Boten Special Economic Zone is coming into being, six years after the $10 billion project was launched.

Located on Lake Victoria in East Africa, Migingo is the most densely populated island in the world. Covering an area smaller than a football pitch, the tiny island is home to several hundred people from Uganda and Kenya. Both countries have territorial claims on this piece of land located near the Kenyan coast, which has valuable fishing rights. Ugandans, who make up around a third of the population, cohabit with Kenyans, under the watchful eye of police from both nations. FRANCE 24's Bastien Renouil reports, with Séverine Bardon and Olivier Marzin.

Every day, nearly 3,000 dugout canoes cross the Oyapock River, which serves as a natural demarcation in South America between Brazil and French Guiana. The river's banks are the scene of trafficking, illegal immigration and unlawful gold panning. Locals play cat and mouse with the border police, who try their best to monitor the comings and goings. The Covid-19 pandemic should have meant a hermetic closure of the border. Instead, it showed more than ever how uncontrollable this frontier is. FRANCE 24's Fanny Lothaire and Laura Damase report, with Séverine Bardon and Olivier Marzin.

The migration crisis, the rise of nationalism and the Covid-19 pandemic have put borders back in the headlines. Although frontiers had never disappeared, globalisation and modern forms of transport had seemed to render them obsolete, at least in many regions. FRANCE 24 brings you a documentary series on four borders that are emblematic of our times. Our reporter Lucile Wassermann travelled to the Arar border crossing between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which is coming back to life in the middle of the desert.

With the war in Ukraine now in its 100th day, we focus on the situation in Transnistria, a small breakaway region of Moldova on Ukraine’s south-western border. Western countries suspect the region of acting as a rear base for the Russian military. The separatist enclave, which has claimed its independence since the fall of the Soviet Union, is located near the strategic Ukrainian port city of Odesa on the Black Sea. Our reporter Lauriane Dherbecourt gained rare access to Transnistria, which for now refuses to take part in the conflict in Ukraine. She discovered a land whose people are torn between East and West.

The ethnic minority Rohingya Muslims suffer severe persecution in Myanmar. Following a deadly crackdown by the Burmese army in 2017, some 740,000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, where they were settled in the southern town of Cox’s Bazar. Five years on, the town is home to the world’s largest and most dangerous refugee camp, with frequent floods, fires and gang wars. In December 2020, the Bangladeshi government decided to relocate some of the Rohingya refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal. Our reporters Alban Alvarez and Mathilde Cusin managed to gain access to it.

The recent leak of a confidential US Supreme Court document has confirmed the conservative-majority court's intention to overturn Roe v. Wade, the ruling that has guaranteed access to abortion throughout the United States for nearly 50 years. Such a decision would have an unprecedented impact on 75 million women of childbearing age. But at the instigation of the Republican Party, some parts of the US, such as the states of Texas and Oklahoma, are already turning into a medical desert for women who seek a termination. Our correspondents Valérie Defert and Pierrick Leurent report on the "post-Roe America".

Thousands of West African soldiers fought for France against the Nazis during World War II. But on December 1, 1944, scores of them were gunned down in unclear circumstances by the very French forces they fought alongside. What really happened on that fateful day at the Thiaroye military camp near the Senegalese capital Dakar? Eighty years on, the documentary "Thiaroye 44" takes a closer look at this dark page of French history.

Africa's demographic growth is having a considerable impact on the continent's capital cities. Kigali, for example, is set to double its population by 2050. In one of the most densely populated areas in the world, authorities are trying to organise this growth in terms of urban planning and economics. Rwanda, which holds great ambitions on the continent, has plans to turn Kigali into Africa’s major international hub of business and finance. A report by Simon Wohlfahrt and Bastien Renouil.