Geesje van Haren is a Dutch journalist, who has run her own media organisation VersPers for over 16 years.

She is the driving force behind the Lost in Europe project and heads up its growing team. She coordinates on-the-ground research, brings the team together, works in the field and is responsible for fundraising. She has extensive experience as a media maker and teaches investigative journalism, creativity, entrepreneurship and photography. She founded the private investigative journalism school Open Eyes in Amsterdam.

Geesje van Haren

Basic information

Name
Geesje van Haren
Title
Journalist
Expertise
Investigative journalism, creativity, entrepreneurship and photography
Country
Netherlands
City
Nederhorst den Berg

Supported projects

Profiting from the Vulnerable

  • Human Rights
  • Migration
  • Youth

ROME – Europe’s asylum centres are intended as safe havens for vulnerable, unaccompanied minors susceptible to trafficking and abuse. However, evidence suggests that these centres may instead become sites of exploitation, with people profiting from the very children they are supposed to be protecting.

Green Gold Rush - How Kenya Pays the Cost for Europe’s Obsession with Avocados

  • Agriculture
  • Environment

MURANGO - Kenya, the largest exporter of avocados in Africa and the sixth largest in the world, has seen extensive deforestation as vast tracts of land are converted to avocado farms, and this is just one of the environmental and social costs of Europe's avocado obsession.

An Unrosy Affair: Europe's Flower Trade Fuels Climate Crisis in Kenya

  • Climate
  • Environment
  • Exploitation

NAIVASHA - Many of the beautiful bouquets sold across European markets have a devastating environmental and human cost. In Kenya, a supplier of 40% of the European cut flower market, the floriculture industry faces accusations of having a calamitous effect on water sources, of chemical use leading to disease, and of widespread abuses of farm workers, 70% of whom are women. 

The Migrant Farm Workers on the Frontline of Europe’s Climate Crisis

  • Agriculture
  • Climate
  • Migration

CAMPOBELLO DI MAZARA –  Bearing the brunt of deadly heat waves and extreme weather, migrant farm workers in Italy and Spain are on the frontline of Europe’s climate emergency. While the media has focused on the impact of rising temperatures on European citizens, hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers in Italy and Spain toil away in 45°C temperatures picking olives, harvesting tomatoes, planting seeds, and irrigating crops. 

Lost in Europe

  • Migration
  • Trafficking
  • Youth

KOSOVO – A well-organised trafficking network in Kosovo has prompted a large number of minors to leave for Italy. Thanks to the Zampa law, introduced in 2017, they can obtain licences to study or work if they register with the Italian immigration services. The law was intended to reduce the number of missing unaccompanied migrant children, but it is facilitating human smuggling. "It's a business worth 100,000 euros a month, but no one seems to care," says the prosecutor in Trieste.