By sheer chance I happened to watch on BBC World last night the second part of a two-hour documentary produced for BBC Two's "This World" program called "One Day of War". It was a quite fascinating account of sixteen people in each of sixteen trouble spots around the world, all filmed on the same day, 22 March 2004.

It's one of those programs that makes me feel angry about how little we are told by our media of the major conflicts around the world. It makes me angrier that we have a government that has little sincere interest in helping solve the world's problems, but instead is more interested in making sure that the victims of conflict don't enter Australia to seek a new life here.

The areas featured in the program are: (i) the Democratic Republic of the Congo, (ii) Iraq, (iii) Chechnya, (iv) Burma, (v) Mindanao, (vi) Nagorno-Karabakh, (vii) Georgia, (viii) Colombia, (ix) the Gaza Strip, (x) Sudan, (xi) Uganda, (xii) the Uraba region of Colombia, (xiii) Nepal, (xiv) Laos, (xv) Afghanistan, and (xvi) Somalia.

Muktar, the fourteen year-old "gun for hire" featured in the Somalian episode, died three days after the program was filmed. The "One Day of War" microsite has a four-minute clip of Muktar's story, as well as a number of other excerpts from the program.

"One Day of War" first screened on BBC Two on 27 May 2004, and was shown on BBC World on the weekend of 18-19 December. I hope either the ABC or SBS pick it up.