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Episode details

World Service,05 Apr 2019,49 mins

The women who joined IS

The Fifth Floor

Available for over a year

Thousands of women and children associated with foreign IS fighters are now in limbo following the defeat of the ‘caliphate’. Tse Yin Lee and Matilda Welin are part of a BBC Monitoring team who have been researching why these women joined IS and what happens to them now. Sri Lanka planetarium Azzam Ameen of BBC Sinhala has been on the road in Sri Lanka with a mobile planetarium. It's the creation of Tharanga Bandara who fell in love with the stars as schoolboy, and wants to spread his passion across the country. Eritrean national service An EU-funded road construction project in Eritrea has brought the country's use of national service conscripts into the news, with human rights groups saying it amounts to forced labour. Tesfalem Araia of BBC Tigrinya remembers his own national service. Rwandan genocide 25 years on Ciru Muriuki of BBC Africa’s Factfinder programme went to Rwanda, 25 years after the genocide in which 800,000 people died. She shares her impressions of the country today, and tells a remarkable story of reconciliation. Women first-time voters in rural India In the run-up to Indian elections, Anagha Patak and Piyush Nagpal from BBC Delhi have been to remote rural areas to meet women first-time voters. Why are the issues they care about, like jobs, education and water scarcity, overlooked by politicians? Image: wives and members of IS under the supervision of a female fighter from the Syrian Democratic Forces Credit: BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images

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