You're about to hear from our own correspondent. We do two versions of the program, one for the BBC World Service, and this one's a download of the latest edition from BBC Radio 4.

It's introduced by Kate Aide.

Hello, today, Mali, the most dangerous place on the planet for UN peacekeepers,

but others there, it seems, have time for lingering lunches at the best hotel in town.

There's a powerful tug on the heartstrings in a graveyard in Addis Ababa where they still

remember the collapse of Italy's African Empire. The Greek island where the tourists have gone, but the money is still coming in.

And they haven't made it to the whirral yet, but in Norway we hear they've come to love the monster alien

invaders from Russia. Things can only get worse. That seems to be the chilling

message from a group of United Nations experts forecasting which parts of

the world are going to need billions of pounds in humanitarian aid over the next few years.

Libya could fall apart, it says. conflict will continue in Afghanistan and Islamist

militants will gain ground in Mali. That particular country on the edge of the

Sahara Desert is now considered the most hazardous of

all the nations where the UN Blue Helmets or Peacekeepers are deployed.

It's still trying to recover from a separatist rebellion which allowed Islamist

extremists to occupy Timbuktu and other northern cities. And Alistelith Head's

been finding out how Mali's complicated mix of armed groups, smugglers and bandits makes peacekeeping

there such a daunting task.

In the wide and lawless land north of Timbuktu, Saharan sand whipped up by the wind quickly covers the tracks of the smugglers

and the traffickers, the arms dealers and the jihadists who thrive in one of the most inhospitable

places on earth.

Crumbling ancient manuscripts, centuries old mud-built mosques

...