Mishkat al-Moumin fought for human rights under Saddam Hussein, and survived assassination attempts as Minister of the Environment in Iraq's interim government. She talks to Bob Webb.

We all need to step out of our respective intellectual ghettos and say, ‘I am open-minded’, according to Professor Tariq Ramadan.

Rajmohan Gandhi looks at the challenges facing a world where sovereignty is no longer seen as an absolute.

Has all this reporting given us the real story? At the time, the 1991 Gulf War was the 'most televised conflict ever'. Yet the public was given precisely the picture that suited the American-led forces-that this was a high-tech war of 'surgical strikes' and few casualties.

Having lost a son in World War I, the great German artist Kathe Kollwitz was avowedly anti-war but equally committed to what she called 'a new idea-that of the brotherhood of man'. In his book, All Saints: daily reflections on saints, prophets and witnesses for our time (Crossroad, 1997), Robert Ellsberg writes that Kollwitz worked for many years on the statue, Mourning Parents, modelled after her and her husband, Karl.

Few issues have caused such division in recent times as Saddam Hussein's despotic regime. The Bush and Blair governments argue that such a regime must not be allowed to use weapons of mass destruction. Other governments - and millions of peace marchers - feel that war is too costly a solution. Both sides claim the moral high ground.

David Swann is a medical doctor who has become known in Canada for sticking his neck out on points of principle. He talked to Gordon Legge at a moment when the debate about war with Iraq was at its height.