Chibok girls are released by Boko Haram

With a smile as brilliant as her gold and green headtie, Margaret praised the Lord. “We never imagined we would see this day,” she said. “With the help of God, we were able to come out of bondage.” Around her, another 20 young women and their relatives, many in equally spectacular traditional dress provided by delighted authorities, danced and sang, and sometimes sobbed.

For more than two years, the girls, from a small Christian town in the predominantly Muslim far north-east of Nigeria, had been held by Boko Haram, the Islamic militant group linked to Islamic State. They were among more than 250 female students abducted from their school during a night raid in April 2014. At least 50 managed to escape hours after the attack, but the rest, kept by their captors in a series of forest camps, were given a choice: convert and marry, or become a servant.

The mass abduction prompted a global outcry, and an international campaign to #BringBackOurGirls. Yet the story slipped from the headlines. Desultory negotiations for the girls’ release went nowhere. The bloody campaign against the militants ground on, with some success but no sign of the students, other than a glimpse in a propaganda video released by the extremists. Some were said to have been killed in a government bombing; others by disease. Two made their own way to freedom, one with a child fathered by a militant. But the rest remained.

The girls were released on 13 October, after weeks of talks brokered by western officials, and flown to the capital, Abuja, where they received medical attention and counselling. Their families, travelling from Chibok, faced a 500-mile drive on potholed roads, slowed by military checkpoints and the fear of attack by insurgents. But they made it at last, embracing their children in emotional scenes at a church service.

Almost immediately came more worries. The father of one of the girls told reporters he was concerned their release would be exploited for political gain. “People’s children are not money, people’s children are not clothes you wear to campaign,” he said. “People’s children are their pride.”

Other observers quietly pointed out that the girls who had escaped earlier had faced ostracism and abuse. Mausi Segun, a researcher in Nigeria for Human Rights Watch, said the negative reaction of conservative communities would mean it was unlikely those released would be able to return to Chibok. “Any sign that there has been sexual contact with any man – and these men are Boko Haram – will cause a backlash. The likelihood they will return home is slim.” There have been reports that many of those still in captivity, aware of the stigmatisation they will face, were unwilling to return to their communities.

But on that day in October, there was simple celebration, and the problems to come were forgotten. Jason Burke. Margaret is a pseudonym

The Ross Sea becomes a marine protected area

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An Adélie penguin jumps on to the ice in the Ross Sea. Photograph: John Weller/AFP/Getty Images

“The Ross Sea is a polar garden of Eden – it’s truly astonishing when you sail there,” Lewis Pugh says. A British endurance swimmer who has plunged into icy waters around the world in the name of conservation, he says this part of Antarctica deserves its reputation for being one of the few almost pristine ecosystems left in the world.

“You see humpback whales, leopard seals, Adélie and Emperor penguins and albatrosses. You get a feel for what the world used to be like before man put his and her hand on it,” the 47-year-old says.

On 1 December 2017, 1.5m sq km of the region will be declared a marine protected area (MPA), with two-thirds off limits to fishing, under an agreement reached in October. Illegal fishing in the area has devastated stocks of the Patagonian toothfish, which led Prince Charles to write to government ministers, pleading with them to save the species and the birds that depend on it.

Reaching consensus on the MPA’s creation was tortuous, with Russia and China blocking a deal for years. That’s partly why conservationists celebrated 2016’s breakthrough so loudly. “It’s hugely significant and historic, and not just because of the number of players,” says Andrea Kavanagh, an Antarctic expert at Pew Charitable Trusts, of the EU and 24 other nations involved. “This was also the first time a multilateral body [CCAMLR] had decided to protect the high seas in a huge way.”

While John Kerry, the US secretary of state, lobbied the Chinese, Pugh’s job was to meet and persuade the top levels of Russian government using his brand of “Speedo diplomacy”. “I think the real tipping point was when Putin appointed Sergei Ivanov as ecologist tsar,” the swimmer says. A former chief of staff for Putin, Ivanov is “passionate about the environment” and a “very hands-on, practical type of person”, Pugh says.

Both Kavanagh and Pugh see the deal as a victory not just for the environment, but for international cooperation. “It’s a sign of hope in a very difficult year,” Kavanagh says. “There are still things all countries can agree on together.”

“We can still see Antarctica as a place for peace- and bridge-building,” Pugh agrees.

Conservationists have their sights set on three more MPAs around Antarctica, and Pugh is back among the wild waves to campaign for them. After speaking to the Guardian from Cape Horn, he swam around the tip of South America, only to have to get back into the roiling waters a second time; he had misjudged the distance and stopped 150m short on his first attempt. Adam Vaughan

Lord of the dance: Ed Balls does Gangnam Style

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ed Balls with dance partner Katya Jones. Photograph: Pixel 8000

BBC1 could have broadcast round-the-clock coverage of vomit slowly evaporating on a hot pavement that second weekend of November and we’d have fallen to our knees, thankful for the distraction. Instead, just when we needed it most, we got a full-strength punch of joy: Ed Balls dancing Gangnam Style on Strictly Come Dancing.

Find a video of the routine and look at his face. Look into his eyes. This is the former chair of the Fabian Society, indiscriminately smashing his hips around to a song about overt consumerism. His cheeks are puffed out, and he’s mouthing the word “bum” over and over again. At one point, he hops up and down like a happy little horse, while his partner kicks and flails between his legs. This is the former cabinet minister, a senior fellow at Harvard, jerking around as if he’s being defibrillated – and it might count as the best thing he’s ever done.

That same weekend, the BBC broadcast footage of a bear, pole dancing against a tree, captured during the making of Planet Earth II. The impact was the same – a powerful figure cutting loose and making a fool of itself – but the context subtly different. That bear had no cultural touch points. It needed to scratch its back. Balls, though? He was doing the whole thing on purpose.

Two weeks later, he was eliminated from Strictly, and Planet Earth II once again became a show about scorpions stabbing bats in the head. Bloody 2016. Stuart Heritage

The year of the elegant exit

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Bowie, who bowed out in January. Photograph: Terry O'Neill/Getty Images

The invisible machinations of “PJS”, the showbiz spouse who this year persuaded the courts to prevent reporting of a threesome, renewed discussion about whether there is a human right to a private life. Meanwhile, a number of artists and broadcasters made their claim on a private death: Terry Wogan, Alan Rickman, David Bowie, Victoria Wood, Caroline Aherne and Ronnie Corbett all died from terminal illnesses in such a way that the news came as a terrible shock. Leonard Cohen had inadvertently let the raven out of the bag, telling the New Yorker that he was “ready to die” just before he did; but he won a victory for privacy by managing to die in Los Angeles and be buried in Montreal, before either event was reported.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Leonard Cohen, who left us in November. Photograph: Jack Robinson/Getty Images

Cohen and Bowie were remarkable for having achieved the artistic equivalent of putting their affairs in order: both wrote and recorded albums that they knew to be final testaments; each dropped a hint derived from scripture. Bowie’s Blackstar, released three days before his death, featured the song Lazarus, (“Look at me, I’m in Heaven”), while Cohen’s You Want It Darker, released 17 days before the singer died, employs as a chorus “Hineni”, or “Here I am”, the Hebrew words used by Moses and Abraham when called by God.

Rickman also left a memorial for his fans, playing a British general in the excellent and posthumously released movie, Eye In The Sky. Wogan had just published his first book of fiction, a form in which he had long wanted to write. Wood was so private her friends say she would not want her final weeks to be discussed, even posthumously. More importantly, all the quietly departed seem, from the accounts that have emerged, to have had the conversations and made the last arrangements they wanted.

This autumn, the BBC broadcaster Steve Hewlett and the writer AA Gill chose the opposite approach, writing or talking publicly about their experiences as late-stage cancer patients. Both routes towards the exit should be available, but the discreet path has opened up in a way that few would have imagined possible for the very famous. In the year of Brexit, hard or soft, the quiet exit became a way of death. Mark Lawson

Prince Harry gets angry

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Prince Harry, speaking out against racism. Photograph: Tim Rooke/Rex/Shutterstock

In a year that will be remembered for the normalisation of bigotry, it was uplifting to hear a member of the royal family condemn racism and sexism. For any lucky sod who hibernated through the year, Prince Harry’s new girlfriend Meghan Markle is, controversially, a US actor who has removed items of clothing on screen. Even more controversially, she is a divorcee. And most controversial of all, she is mixed race.

The Sun ran a front page story with the headline “HARRY GIRL’S ON PORNHUB”, a reference to the internet pornography site that featured her in clips from the TV series Suits. A number of newspapers noted with surprise that she was a “brunette”, which appeared to be a euphemism of sorts. The Daily Mail ran a story headlined “Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton”. And that headline is (almost) straight outta the textbook of racist stereotyping.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Harry’s girlfriend Meghan Markle. Photograph: George Pimentel/WireImage

Prince Harry responded with a statement commenting on “the wave of abuse and harassment” to which Markle had been subjected, referring to “the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments”.

I’ve always associated the British royal family with fuelling prejudice rather than combating it: from the Queen Mother supporting white supremacist rule in Rhodesia and telling Woodrow Wyatt she had “some reservations about Jews”; to Prince Philip telling a student in China, “If you stay here much longer, you’ll go home with slitty eyes”; to Harry himself in a swastika armband at a fancy dress party in 2005, and talking of a fellow soldier as “our little Paki friend” in 2009.

Harry’s swastika was offensive and stupid, as was his racist description of the soldier. And yes, he might only have condemned the press this time because it was personal. But the fact is, he spoke out against racism, and as far as I know that is a first for Britain’s royal family. He deserves a big pat on his overprivileged back. Simon Hattenstone

The sound of breaking glass: the US election brings some gains

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kate Brown, the US’s first openly LGBT governor. Photograph: Don Ryan/AP

For Americans expecting shattered glass on 8 November, the election of Donald Trump was devastating. But the night did usher in a handful of Democratic women whose elections broke barriers and made history.

Pramila Jayapal was the first Indian-American woman elected to the US House of Representatives. Having immigrated to the US from India at 16, election night was “bittersweet” for her. The team learned of Jayapal’s victory just as the news networks declared Trump the next president. “It is not the Congress I wanted to come into, but I’ve never backed down from a fight before, and I won’t start now,” Jayapal tells me.

Democrats are preparing for long battles over equal rights and justice. “I will fight to make sure we don’t backtrack on the human and civil rights of our people,” says Oregon governor Kate Brown, who is bisexual and the nation’s first openly LGBT governor. Minnesota elected Ilhan Omar as state representative, the first female Somali-American Muslim lawmaker.

These elections, alongside those of Kamala Harris in California, who became the first Indian-American senator, and Tammy Duckworth in Illinois, the first Thai-American senator, were celebrated as glimmers of hope in the face of Trump’s victory.

As was Nevada’s election of Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Latina in the US Senate. “I have received letters and emails from little girls who are excited to see a woman in a big role,” she says. “It’s humbling.” Lauren Gambino

Austria rejects the far right

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alexander Van der Bellen wins in Austria. Photograph: Matthias Schrader/AP

In a year when the liberal left lost elections across the globe, would anyone have batted an eyelid if Austria, of all places, had presented the EU with its first far-right head of state of the postwar era?

In May, Norbert Hofer, the youthful, puppy-eyed deputy leader of the anti-immigration Freedom party, lost the presidential vote by the narrowest of margins. Then, thanks to irregularities in the postal vote count, his party won an appeal for a rerun and everything seemed to be going in their favour: a year of campaigning had softened the radical right’s image and most polls had Hofer ahead. And yet, on 4 December, Austria bucked the western trend, sidelining Hofer in favour of Alexander Van der Bellen, a former leader of the Green party, who had run as an independent.

To call it a sea change might be to overstate it (after all, 46.2% of Austrians voted for a candidate from a party founded by former Nazis) but there’s a positive here that should not be forgotten. Van der Bellen, 72, a mellow retired economist, gave a glimpse of what unusual shapes the fightback against rightwing populism can take. An unshaven chain-smoker from a disadvantaged background, with an aversion to buzzwords, he was arguably a better “anti-establishment” candidate than Hofer, who entered political life at 23 and worked as a rhetoric coach. Van der Bellen ran a positive, inclusive campaign, summed up by his slogan: “Those who love their homeland don’t divide it.”

A clear majority of female voters (62%, up from 54% in May) voted for him. One, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor, approached Van der Bellen’s campaign the week before the election. The resulting video, in which she warned that Hofer’s party brought out “the basest in people, not the decent, but the indecent”, became a viral hit and may have helped swing the vote in the liberal candidate’s favour. Philip Oltermann

I’m A Celebrity… breaks the reality TV mould

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 2017 I’m A Celebrity… love-in. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

Just when we thought reality television couldn’t sink any lower, having delivered a summer of public sex followed by public shaming, the unexpected happened: the 16th season of I’m A Celebrity… featured a bunch of polite people getting along very nicely. And hugging a lot.

“I think it was just what the country needed,” says Joel Dommett, the comedian who came second in the contest. “Viewers enjoyed watching people having nice conversations around a campfire. I sat there thinking, ‘I am being horrifically unentertaining’, but everyone seems to have enjoyed it.”

It was an unlikely group of new BFFs. The 69-year-old actor Larry Lamb became a second father to the street dancer Jordan Banjo. Gogglebox star (and eventual winner) Scarlett Moffatt was delightfully starstruck by Carol Vorderman as they ate turkey testicles and camel nipples. Even the bloke from Homes Under The Hammer eventually stopped whining and became agreeable. “He was the first person in the camp who wasn’t positive,” Dommett says, “but we sort of infected him with our positivity, and then he was flying.”

Did the producers deliberately cast an uncontentious group as a tonic to a year overrun by conflict? Or, more likely, did they just strike a bit dull? Either way, the result was unexpectedly heartwarming. As Dommett says, “People were just being normal and real with each other. Instead of pissing on the street and giving blowjobs in a hot tub.” Abigail Radnor

• Joel Dommett is on tour with Joel Dommett: Live In 2017; go to joeldommett.com for details.

Look, no hands: driverless cars move into the fast lane

Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Thousands of Britons are killed on the road every year. It’s one of those things we seem to have quietly accepted as the cost of modernity, alongside climate change, internet piracy and Facebook. So it’s odd to think that, within a decade, road deaths could plausibly be a thing of the past. Self-driving cars have the potential to reshape society, leading to a world in which the boundaries blur between public and private vehicles, ownership and hire, delivery and transportation. But before they have any of those effects, they will hopefully save the lives of tens of thousands of people around the globe.

By the end of 2017, we’ll have a better idea of how this is going to shake out. This coming year will be a gamechanger for self-driving cars, with Tesla Motors ramping up its Autopilot programme and shipping the first of its Model 3 cars; Google potentially spinning out its own project into a stand-alone company; and the rapid proliferation of other organisations working in the same space, from Oxford University to San Franciscan startups.

The safety potential of self-driving cars took a knock in 2016, when Tesla Motors admitted to the first fatal crash involving the company’s Autopilot feature. Joshua Brown, who owned an Autopilot-enabled Tesla Model S, was killed when his car ploughed into the side of a truck. Brown’s death forced Tesla to re-emphasise that the Autopilot feature, as it currently exists, isn’t self-driving. Instead, it’s a driver-assist feature: it still requires a qualified driver to supervise and take over in the case of a mistake.

Some companies developing real self-driving technology disagree with this approach. For Google, whose X labs have been developing self-driving cars since 2012, there’s no point shipping such vehicles until they don’t need a driver at all.

But even a driver-assist feature may still end up saving huge numbers of lives. As of July, when Tesla went public about Brown’s death, a cumulative 130m miles had been driven with Autopilot turned on. Among normal American drivers, there’s a fatality roughly once every 94m miles. A robot doesn’t get drunk, distracted or drowsy and its reactions can be faster than are humanly possible.

The numbers carried on getting better and better for Tesla. Six months later, and hundreds of millions more miles have been driven with Autopilot turned on, yet no other confirmed fatality has been reported. A revolution has quietly begun. Alex Hern

• Where did it all go right? For a more positive view of the world in 2017, follow the Guardian’s Half Full online series, with reports on innovative ideas and solutions to the challenges of the day. Wishing you all a happier new year.