Hardtalk

Stephen Sackur speaks to the writer and public intellectual Pascal Bruckner and asks, is something rotten in the Republic of France? As the country prepares to elect a new president, polls suggest record levels of apathy and disillusion amongst French voters. A spate of terror attacks has sown insecurity and sparked a heated debate about immigration, Islam and France's identity. Is France living through an age of decline?Photo: Pascal Bruckner in the Hardtalk studio)

Why did a UN agency publish a report that categorised Israel as an apartheid state? Rima Khalaf was Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia until March 2017. She commissioned a report which accused Israel of systematically implementing apartheid policies and promptly resigned from her UN post when the Secretary General refused to accept the work. What were her motives?

HARDtalk’s Zeinab Badawi speaks to psychologist, Jan Kizilhan, a Yazidi Kurd living in Germany who has helped bring over a thousand Yazidi females from camps in Iraq to Germany to start a new life. The so-called Islamic State may be coming under pressure in both Syria and Iraq but still accounts emerge of atrocities carried out by them. The minority Yazidi community has been amongst one of the most persecuted groups of people: living mostly in northern Iraq, they have been killed, forced to convert to Islam and the women and girls have been held in sexual slavery. How does he decide who should stay and who should go?

Sarah Montague speaks to the economist, Professor Sir Paul Collier. The refugee crisis is one of the world's most intractable problems: 60 million people have fled their homes, with a third of them also fleeing their own country. But Professor Collier believes the problem is fixable and "we can do it easily". The solution he argues is to give refugees jobs. In doing so he suggests everyone will benefit. But if the answer was so simple why has it not been done before?

How does the EU need to change if it is to win over the next generation of Italians? Hardtalk’s Sarah Montague speaks to Italy’s Under-Secretary for European Affairs, Sandro Gozi. The EU seems in greater trouble than ever before and not just because of Brexit. Even founding members of the club – countries like Italy - are unhappy about the direction that it is headed in its 60th year. The Italian economy has always struggled within the confines of the Euro. Additionally, it wants its fellow members to help share the burden of the half a million migrants who have arrived on its shores over the past three years. How does the EU need to change if it is to win over the next generation of Italians?Image: Sandro Gozi, Credit: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

Whether you think of him as Richard III or Gandalf, you will know he has won hearts and accolades around the world - not just for five decades of work on stage and screen, but also for his passionate public advocacy, particular on the issue of gay rights. Sir Ian McKellen was brought up in a Britain in which homosexuality was still a crime. He did not come out publicly until he was 49. Almost three decades on he is still acting and still campaigning. For this special programme recorded in front of an audience to mark 20 years of Hardtalk, Stephen Sackur asks him to what extent has the cultural landscape changed?

Why is a former head of state-sanctioned executions now an opponent of the death penalty? A host of countries around the world still impose the ultimate punishment on the most serious criminals - death. But what is it like to be in command of the machinery of state-sanctioned execution? In a rare insight, Stephen Sackur speaks to Allen Ault, who spent years running the corrections system in the southern US state of Georgia. He organised the killing of criminals until he could stand it no more. What changed?(Photo: Allen Ault - Former Commissioner of Corrections, Georgia, USA, on BBC Hardtalk)

He spent 26 years in jail for trying to topple South Africa’s white minority government. Veteran anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada has died. He was 87 years old. For 18 years he was with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, and when he was released from prison in October 1989 at the age of 60, he continued the struggle for a non racial South Africa. After the first democratic elections in 1994, President Mandela persuaded him to join him in government as his political adviser. Sarah Montague interviewed Ahmed Kathrada for Hardtalk in April 2014. A man who had given his entire life to the liberation struggle, he had no time for hatred or bitterness.(Photo: Ahmed Kathrada. Credit: Getty Images)

Looking back, what does the last surviving prosecutor at the Nazi Nuremberg trials think they achieved? 98-year-old Ben Ferencz helped liberate the death camps in Europe when he was serving in the US military. Himself a Jew from central Europe, he speaks to Zeinab Badawi in Florida about what he has learnt in his long life about the nature of evil.

Does Turkey's main opposition party have a credible alternative vision for the country? Zeinab Badawi talks to Selin Sayek Böke, a deputy leader for the CHP. Her party was established by the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and was the automatic party of government for decades. So what went wrong?(Photo: Selin Sayek Böke, Deputy Leader of the CHP on Hardtalk)

HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to Joshua Wong, a leader of the so-called umbrella pro-democracy protests that swept Hong Kong in 2014. He's now the secretary general of the Demosisto political party. But since Hong Kong is due to elect a new chief executive later this month, who will not be chosen by the people, has the territory's pro-democracy movement failed?

Sarah Montague speaks to Zimbabwe’s Tourism Minister Walter Mzembi. His job is to persuade people to holiday in a country where doctors, nurses and teachers have all been on strike, half the rural population face starvation and the economy is in the grip of a major currency crisis. He's worked alongside President Mugabe for the last decade. But at the age of 93 and with plans to stand in elections next year, isn't it time for the oldest head of state to go?(Photo: Walter Mzembi. Credit: Getty Images)

Sarah Montague speaks to Vladimir Kara-Murza, Vice-Chairman of the pro-democracy movement Open Russia. He was rushed to hospital in Moscow when his organs started failing and says he knew immediately what was happening because the same thing had happened two years previously. Both times he claims, he was the victim of deliberate poisoning. He also claims he was targeted because of his opposition to President Putin and the Russian government. After his stay in Washington, where he is currently recovering, he intends to go back to Moscow. Does he still fear for his life?(Photo: Vladimir Kara-Murza)

Bob Graham is one of the most popular politicians in contemporary American history. He has never lost an election and has served as a state legislator, Florida governor, and in the US Senate. He hails from the progressive, liberal wing of the Democratic party. But with Donald Trump in the White House and the Republicans controlling Capitol Hill, Zeinab Badawi asks him, has his type of politics gone out of fashion?(Photo: Bob Graham. Credit: Getty Images)

How tainted is Joice Mujuru by her long association with the ZANU-PF party? Stephen Sackur speaks to Joice Mujuru, former Vice President of Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is 93 years old. His wife recently suggested he could win re-election as a corpse, but failing that Zimbabwe needs to grapple with the issue of the succession. Who will follow Mugabe? Joice Mujuru is his former vice-president and one-time heir apparent. She broke away from the ruling party two years ago and now leads her own opposition party, but how tainted is she by her long association with Robert Mugabe?(Photo: Former Vice President Joyce Mujuru speaks at the launch of her party, Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) 2016, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Credit: Zinyange Auntony/AFP)

Zeinab Badawi speaks to the Congolese businessman and politician Moïse Katumbi. The President of the Democratic Republic of Congo Joseph Kabila has been in power for sixteen years and it was thought he would step down at elections that were due in November 2016. However, the elections are yet to be held. Moise Katumbi says he will run for president at the next election but is currently in exile in Europe. But can he rally enough support since he's not even living in his own country?(Photo: Moise Katumbi Chapwe, Governor of Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga province, 2015. Credit: Federico Scoppa/AFP)

What does the Trump era mean for the Palestinian dream of statehood? For years the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been stuck, condemned to repeat itself year in, year out. But now something has changed – the two protagonists remain deaf to each other’s demands – but there's a new US president who seems to care little for Washington's long established quest for a two state solution. Does the Trump era signal the end for Palestinian hopes of statehood? Husam Zomlot, Senior Adviser to the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, talks to Stephen Sackur.

HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, former Prime Minister of Ukraine. After three years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, 10,000 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced, is it time for Ukraine's leaders to acknowledge they’re in a war they cannot win? Arseniy Yatsenyuk was Ukraine's prime minister from 2014 to 2016 and he described his own premiership as a 'suicide mission.' How does his nation avoid self-destruction?

Is the much vaunted Singapore model under threat? HARDtalk’s Stephen Sacker is in Singapore for an exclusive interview with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Singapore represents one of the great economic success stories of the last fifty years but clouds are gathering on its horizon. President Trump is challenging assumptions about free trade and traditional security alliances in Asia.

HARDtalk’s Stephen Sacker is in Singapore for an exclusive interview with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Singapore represents one of the great economic success stories of the last fifty years but clouds are gathering on its horizon. President Trump is challenging assumptions about free trade and traditional security alliances in Asia. Is the much vaunted Singapore model under threat?