In this ground-breaking new series for Sky1 HD, Ross Kemp travels the world to investigate some of the most extreme issues facing our planet today.
Juarez, Mexico, the murder capital of the world; the Congo, where mutilation and rape are used as weapons of war; Chicago, the heroin capital of the United States; Haiti, a country no stranger to disaster, natural or man-made; and finally the UK, where, more than two hundred years since it was abolished, he discovers that slavery is thriving.
Extreme World has tackled these issues head-on and everything the viewer witnesses is happening right now.
His chosen destinations are Mexico, Congo, Chicago, Haiti and even the UK. In each episode, Ross confronts criminals responsible for drug dealing, human trafficking, murder and rape. He also sees the human cost of these crimes and meets those who risk their lives in the pursuit of justice.
Ross travels to Juarez in Northern Mexico, the murder capital of the world. More than 3000 people were gunned down in the city last year, victims of a bloody drug war being played out on America’s doorstep. Ross investigates the ruthless cartels fighting for control of the drug trade between Mexico and the US-a business worth more than $40 billion a year. Cartels rule and run the city through a policy known as ‘silver or lead’. Anyone who stands in their way is offered huge bribes-those who refuse are shot.
Ross also visits the Democratic Republic of Congo, scene of the deadliest yet least reported conflict since WWII. The war has claimed over six million lives over the past ten years. Those fighting in the Congo use rape and mutilation as a weapon of war. At a remote hospital Ross meets some of the thousands of innocent women who are gang raped, tortured and unspeakably disfigured in the region every year, and travels to some of the most hostile areas in Africa to confront the men responsible for these atrocities. He discovers this is not only the rape of the people but of an entire nation.
Ross travels to Chicago-scene of America’s biggest heroin problem- to investigate an epidemic that is destroying lives, families and entire communities and is now moving from the city’s ghettos to its most affluent suburbs. Granted rare access into the city’s secretive and highly lucrative underworld, Ross visits shooting galleries and witnesses gang members preparing wholesale consignments of heroin in underground ‘stash houses’. He joins dealers on street corners, meets women addicts who walk the streets selling sex for drugs and men forced to beg for change, shoplift and rob to get their fix.
Ross then goes to Haiti , scene of possibly the worst natural disaster of modern times. The quake claimed almost a quarter of a million lives and made over a million Haitians homeless.
The international community pledged more than ten billion dollars-$37,000 for each Haitian affected by the quake- to help rebuild Haiti, yet today the country’s plight is as desperate as ever. One year on, Ross Kemp travels to Port au Prince to meet Haiti’s lost generation, the end product of Haiti’s long history of violence, corruption, exploitation and natural disaster, a generation that symbolises the failure of one of the biggest relief efforts in modern history.
On returning to British shores Ross reveals the trafficking of men, women and children from around the world to the UK, an international crime that generates staggering profits by turning millions of people around the world into modern day slaves.
The UN estimates that traffickers earn in excess of $32 billion every year and that 2.5 million people around the world are victims of the trafficker’s. Unbelievably, 125 years after abolition, slavery is flourishing here in the UK and Ross investigates the silent tragedy occurring on our own doorstep.
Ross Kemp: Extreme World starts this winter on Sky1 HD
