World Questions

BBC World Questions comes to Bogota, Colombia, as the country seeks a recipe for peace and an end to one of the world's longest running conflicts.

President Juan Manuel Santos has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, but the people rejected his deal with the leader of The Farc in a referendum. A new deal has been signed, but will it have legitimacy without a second referendum?

BBC World Questions, staged with the British Council at Bogota's Luis Angel Arango Concert Hall, provides an opportunity to discuss the future for Colombia at this key moment in its history.

Featuring a distinguished panel of guests including Sergio Jaramillo, Colombia's High Commissioner for Peace; Senator Ivan Duque, of the Movement Democratic Centre; Mariela Kohon, Director of Justice for Colombia and Advisor to the Peace Delegation of The Farc; and Dr María Emma Wills Obregón, who leads the Department of Gender and Women at Colombia's Historical Memory Commission.

(Picture: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (L) and the head of the Farc guerrilla Timoleon Jimenez, aka Timochenko (R), with Cuban President Raul Castro (C) holding their handshake. Credit: Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images)

Hungary has just held a deeply controversial referendum on the EU’s plan to impose migrant quotas. The European Union wants to share the responsibility for those entering the region through its southern borders. Many of them refugees from war. In a lively and frank debate at Corvinus University, Budapest, a large public audience debates freedom, democracy and immigration with a panel of politicians and thinkers chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby.

The panel includes the Government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács, Opposition MP for the Together party, Zsuzsanna Szelényi, business leader and former Hungarian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, János Csák and the Greek expert on the European Union, professor Loukas Tsoukalis.

Sixty years after the Hungarian Uprising against Soviet control, what is Hungary’s future within the EU?

(Photo: Debate panel and audience at Corvinus University, Budapest)

A string of terrorist attacks in France and Germany dominated the news agenda in summer 2016. Now, some journalists are asking if their approach needs to change. Can a balance be struck between reporting terrorism whilst suppressing terrorist propaganda?

As the UK prepares to vote on whether to stay or leave the European Union we hear different sides of Britain's great debate. Jonathan Dimbleby is joined by former EU Commissioner Lord Chris Patten and the economic historian Nick Crafts, both who favour remaining in the EU, as well as former Foreign Secretary Lord David Owen and the economist Ruth Lea who support Britain leaving the European Union.

(Photo: The European Union flag and the British flag sit on top of a sand castle on a beach in Southport, United Kingdom. Credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

As Europe faces some of the greatest crises of modern time, Germany’s leadership in the Europe Union has been put under pressure. World Questions is in Berlin at the Deutsches Historiches Museum to explore a German audience’s questions to a panel of opinion-formers and decision-makers. Jonathan Dimbleby is joined by Aydan Özoguz, Cabinet Member and Federal Commissioner for Immigration, Refugees and Integration; Christian Schmidt, leader of the ALFA party in Berlin; the contemporary historian professor Gerhard Hirschfeld; the migration researcher professor Naika Foroutan; and Philipp Lengsfeld, CDU Member of the Bundestag.

(Photo: Refugees waiting to register in Passau, South Germany, on 16 January2016. Credit: Armin Weigel/AFP/Getty Images)

We're at the National Library of Latvia in the capital, Riga, for the third of our series of debates across Europe. Questions on the challenges and opportunies ahead for this northern European Baltic state - which lies on the EU's border with northern Russia - are answered by a panel of Latvian politicians and thinkers: Nils Ušakovs, the ethnic-Russian mayor of Riga; Ojārs Ēriks Kalniņš, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in parliament; and Baiba Rubesa, chair of the new Rail Baltica project, intended to link the Baltic states to the European rail network. They are joined by Magnus Christiansson, a Swedish security strategist specialising in NATO and the Baltic states. Questions come from the audience in Riga, and also BBC World Service social media followers.

(Photo: National Library of Latvia)

From his early work with Egyptian mummies to his breath taking achievement of sequencing the genome of our nearest ancient relatives - the Neanderthals - professor Svante Paabo has changed how we think about ourselves. He and his team have found a comparatively small number of changes in the genes between us and Neanderthals, including changes in the brain. Could these differences explain what makes us human?

How the Neanderthals live on in our genes. Robin Ince interviews Svante Paabo in Leipzig.

A once in 10,000 year event gave astrophysicist Thaisa Storchi Bergman her eureka moment

Nowhere has felt the challenge of mass migration and pain of austerity more keenly than Greece, or has struggled harder in its relationship with the European Union. From the Megaron concert hall in Athens, the BBC's Jonathan Dimbleby discusses the issues with a panel of politicians and thinkers - The Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos; the former Mayor of Athens and former Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis; underwater archaeologist and union official Despina Koutsoumba; and Josef Janning, Senior Policy Adviser at the European Council on Foreign Relations. They answer questions from an audience in Athens, and also those from BBC World Service followers on social media.

(Photo: The archaeological site of Acropolis in Athens, seen through a fence on November 2015 due to a 24-hour general strike. Credit: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images)