PUNJAB - For years, the focus has been on men from Punjab who get trafficked to Europe, which is also colloquially known as Kabootar Baazi. This investigation by Journalismfund.eu's grantees reveal how Punjabi women are increasingly being trafficked by travel agents from India, but due to the social stigma, the state doesn’t have enough information about this growing menace.

BRUSSELS-AMSTERDAM - The Jehovah's Witnesses are a large global church community that most people know from their door-to-door visits, and in recent years in the spotlight because of allegations of child abuse and the exclusion of former members.

KABUL - This investigation sheds a light on the scale of abuse Afghan women are subjected to when trying to reach Europe. Women with no documents and no money are exposed to trafficking by unscrupulous smugglers who take advantage of the situation.

ODEMIRA - Changing migration patterns mean that more Nepalis are now travelling to western Europe via dangerous, illegal routes in the hopes of obtaining residence in a European country like Portugal. 

SARDINIA - EVIA - The Mediterranean basin is a hotspot of the climate crisis, with average temperatures rising above global trends. Heat waves, droughts and a combination of anthropogenic factors are provoking new generations of wildfires that are devastating for ecosystems and for human societies.

Nuclear waste in Croatia and Italy - this is the story of public interest and irresponsible politics.

BEIRUT - In the last decade, Denmark has promoted itself as a green frontrunner. But the investigation shows how Denmark is not only exporting windmills and green know-how, it has also supported and built polluting power plants outside its own borders. 

Air pollution is one of the most important environmental risks affecting health. According to WHO, it causes up to 7 million premature deaths worldwide per year and around 379.000 in the EU and the United-Kingdom. One might think that we all breathe the same air and all face those risks, but we don't.

Women are losing rights everywhere in South-East Europe, first of all the right of abortion, but a new feminist movement is rising. 

LUSAKA - Zambia is blessed with abundant natural resources, coupled with its strategic geographical location as a land locked nation in the southern part of Africa. From the inception, Zambia has largely depended on copper and other minerals. Copper production has contributed highly to Zambia's economic growth, though not up to the expectation of many citizens.

LOME - Investigative journalists Andrew Weir and Nicolas Vescovacci reveal the networks of influence and finance that built up the logistics empire of Vincent Bolloré and made him the target of official investigations into alleged corruption in Africa. 

NAYPYIDAW - This is a story that describes the downfall of the financial sector of Myanmar after the military coup in February 2021. Due to a history of nationalisations and demonetisations, people and businesses lost trust in the banks immediately after the coup. That resulted in a bankrun. 

VARNA - Improper management of a wastewater treatment pipe in the Varna lake has led to repeated toxic leaks since 2019. 

NAIROBI - Kenya's attorney general's office opened a corruption and fraud investigation in 2019. The dams were supposed to bring water and electricity. Nothing is left at the site.

BUDAPEST - Hungary during the 2022 election campaign: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán relies on a level of media control unprecedented in the EU. A group of young journalists takes on the state propaganda. The documentary by Bence Máté and Áron Szentpéteri shows exclusive footage and documents taken directly from the state media headquarters. They reveal how the Prime Minister's Cabinet Office controls the media and rules over 80% of the media market.

MINSK - 72 Hours That Changed Belarus tells the story of the post-election collapse of human rights in the country through the first-hand experiences of those affected the most: a young couple injured by a stun grenade, a recent law graduate who documented torture and later fled to protect herself and the evidence, a blogger and a student who were tortured inside the infamous Okrestina jail in Minsk.

BELGRADE - In Serbia, there is a lot of lithium, money and political interest at stake. Under the farming lands of its Jadar valley, geologists from mining giant Rio Tinto found Europe's largest lithium deposits - an amount enough to produce at least one million electric car batteries a year. 

BRUSSELS - Suffering from Parkinson's disease or cancer, European farm workers experience inadequate recognition and failing compensation schemes, a cross-border research of media in ten European countries shows.

Europe’s dump yard and the system behind the international recycling business

GOMA - Through the beautiful green hills of North Kivu, a 150-kilometre road winds from the capital Goma to the coltan and cassiterite mining area, road 529. Since 2002, efforts have been made to rehabilitate the road, which runs through one of the most dangerous areas in the world.

PORTO - Research by journalists Eelco van Wieringen (Buro Publieke Werken, Holland), Micael Pereira (Expresso Portugal) and Twan Kroon (researcher, Holland) shows that the age of port wines is often incorrect. They commissioned scientific research into the actual age of 10 and 20 year old Tawny ports. In more than half of the cases, the bottles appear to contain too young port.

BRUSSELS - The identities of eight Russian "undeclared intelligence officers" who Nato recently expelled from Brussels shed light on the Russian espionage threat in Belgium, which also hosts EU institutions.

EL FAROUAR - Despite being owned by one of the richest French families, the Perrodos, the French-British company Perenco has a long history of secrecy and discretion...

TRIPOLI - Before his death, Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi moved a giant fortune out of the country. It is gold, diamonds and cash worth billions of dollars – financed with revenues from the sale of oil. Although the international community has committed to returning assets stolen from autocrats, the whereabouts of much of it is unclear. And the hunt for Gaddafi's treasure is taking place in secret.

DAMASCUS - Every month, crimes committed in Syria since 2011 have repercussions on European soil and lead to new actions, thanks to the involvement of Syrian lawyers and human rights defenders. Mazen, Maryam, Anwar, and Hadi and many other defenders of justice and human rights track down suspected criminals, collect evidence and documents to bring these criminals in front of European courts in the name of the principle of universal jurisdiction.

DHAKA - Faced with poverty and lack of opportunities, young Bangladeshis often dream of a better life in Europe that will allow them to provide for their families. Dalaals or ‘travel agents’ encourage and capitalise upon these hopes. Among those that take the risky journey to Italy known as 'the game' are hundreds of unaccompanied minors. The reality that greets them is often one of misery, exploitation, and slavery.

Le Monde and The Investigative Desk delved into the multi-layered world of Big Tobacco’s 21st century astroturfing. They discovered that under the guise of defending individual freedom, fake consumer organisations are promoting e-cigarettes. 

SAMOS-KOS - This cross-border independent investigation focuses on the newly opened “closed controlled access center” on the island of Samos. The first “pilot project of the European Union” that opened on the 18th of September this year and was entirely financed (43 Million Euros) by a fund of the EU-Commission, which vowed to “No Moria Morias”, after Europe's biggest refugee Camp Moria, on the Greek island of Lesvos burned down last year.  

Beekeepers in Europe are struggling. Over the past decades, European policies, and especially the Common Agricultural Programme (CAP), have promoted the industrialisation of agriculture, leaving no space for bees to thrive and exposing them to many harms, such as pesticides. 

GERMANY - xHamster is one of the most visited porn websites in Germany and the world. The xHamster bosses have been in hiding for years. Now research reveals for the first time two leading figures behind Germany's most visited porn site.

CAIRO - After Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was elected President in May 2014, several amendments to the public procurement law were made that allowed the Egyptian military to further strengthen its grip on the economy. The amendments helped companies affiliated with the army reap the lion’s share of major public contracts, including the construction of the new administrative capital in Cairo, real estate projects, highways and infrastructure, that were granted under direct, non-competitive bidding.

LUBLIN, POLAND - The export of waste to Poland is booming. Among these exports, illegal shipments frequently occur. Companies from Germany, the UK, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden have illegally exported waste to Poland in recent years.

This transnational three-part investigation looks at agricultural biotechnologies, better known as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) from the African perspective using Burkina Faso, South Africa and Uganda as case studies.

NAIROBI - MOGADISHU - The smuggling of Khat, locally known as Miraa, is being carried out openly in Kenya’s coastal town of Lamu. The smuggling has been heightened due to the fact that Miraa export to Somalia was banned in 2020 following a diplomatic row between the two states. 

ACCRA, GHANA - This investigation puts the spotlight on the dumping of e-waste, particularly discarded colling appliances by Europe’s e-waste exporters in Africa in contravention of EU’s law and the Basel Convention while port officials in Europe turn a blind eye to the shipment of these discarded appliances.

LUXEMBOURG - Migrants are victims of mistreatment and exploitation by their relatives and friends in the heart of Europe. This story shows how in Luxembourg some of the poorest migrants face injustice which needs to be exposed and addressed.

BRUSSELS - For the first time in history, the world is consuming more bottled water than soft drinks. Although access to safe water is both a fundamental human need and a basic human right recognised by the United Nations, the continuous growth in bottled water consumption is not just a response to basic human need.

CRAIOVA - A team of journalists investigated the connections between an institution for Romanian democracy and a crime group, who sustained together a corruption network violating law and blocking controls to favor their political leaders. 

YAMOUSSOUKRO - The money that European nightlife spends for its favorite drug finances Hezbollah's wars on the side of Iran. An insider from the Lebanese community in Ivory Coast, one of the new cocaine hubs in West Africa, speaks and paints a chilling picture that spans half the globe, from the slums of Abidjan to Beirut, via the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp.

CALABRIA - This two-part series, based on two years of research by reporters from IrpiMedia and OCCRP, explores how the 'Ndrangheta's network operates.

LUBUMBASHI, KOLWEZI, BERLIN - To make the batteries for electric cars, manufacturers need cobalt. This documentary shows the efforts of the European car industry to ensure proper supply chains, and documents in the cobalt mines in the Congo that this is impossible.

DERRYCRAVE - As part of a cross-border project to investigate the peat extraction industries in Ireland and Latvia, the Irish investigative platform Noteworthy has examined the impacts of unlicensed peat extraction across the country. The findings reveal a system of largely unregulated peat extraction that continues to this day where the Irish State has largely fallen down on its enforcement role, including that no local or national authority maintains a register of peat companies or the amount of peat extracted for commercial purposes.

SERREKUNDA - Irregular migration from West Africa to the Spanish Canary Islands has risen from 2,700 boat refugees in 2019 to over 23,000 in 2020. This has caused a great deal of social and political concern. 

ANKARA - Turkey has been using its vast presence in Europe and official institutions such as mosques, consulates and institutions in an effort to track its dissidents using covert Turkish intelligence activities.

ROTTERDAM - In the fight against drugs crime in their ports, the mayors of Rotterdam (Aboutaleb) and Antwerp (De Wever), kicked off in 2019 a more intensive collaboration between their ports. The big meeting took place behind closed doors at the Feyenoord Stadium.

THE HAGUE - The Netherlands is an important financial centre behind the international arms trade. Research from The Investigative Desk (the Netherlands) and an Indian news outlet shows how some of the biggest arms companies in the world use the Netherlands as an intermediary to wire profits to tax havens. 

BELGRADE - In this project a cross-border team of journalists sheds a light on how societies in former Yugoslavia deal with the past, by focusing on how war criminals are reintegrated in their home countries: a closer look at the results of international criminal justice.

VOLVIC - An in-depth investigation of the We Report network uncovers the dark side of the bottled water business in Europe, where the market is dominated by multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Danone.

NAIROBI - This story uncovers a multitude of worrying allegations about the unregulated surrogacy industry in Kenya.

DAMASCUS - The Syrian government has raised billions of Syrian pounds to rebuild war-stricken cities through a "reconstruction tax." But where does the money really go? A joint investigation by OCCRP, SIRAJ, and Finance Uncovered, supported by Journalismfund.eu's Money Trail grant programme.

ACCRA, ABUJA - This story puts the spotlight on a clandestine network of gunsmiths and arms traffickers operating in West Africa in contravention of local laws. It shows how these gunsmiths and traffickers exploit the porous borders across the West Africa and Sahel region to traffic illicit small arms and light weapons, which continues to fuel conflicts across the region.

LONDON - The shipping industry is central to the global economy. But among the world's biggest polluters and tax avoiders. Its emissions, from the dirtiest fuel-oil on earth, are larger than those of Germany, and have a serious impact on climate change.

A'DAM - BRUSSELS - More and more people are moving to the city, but what does the future of these growing cities look like? Thanks to Journalismfund.eu’s LOCAL grant programme, two media organisations (BRUZZ from Brussels and AT5 from Amsterdam) have teamed up for the first time to investigate the two cities. In a five-part series of videos and articles, the two city media delved into the crucial challenges for the city of tomorrow: mobility, housing, waste, tourism and language.

ACCRA, ABUJA – This investigation exposes a hidden network of Chinese control and ownership of many industrial fishing vessels operating in Ghanaian and Nigerian waters in contravention of local laws.