Supported projects

BRUSSELS – This investigation shows that local opposition to new reception centres for asylum seekers is often not a spontaneous neighbourhood protest. In 23 of the 26 Flemish municipalities where a new reception centre has opened since 2016, Vlaams Belang actively organised or supported the protest ...

BRUSSELS / MADRID / PARIS – On air and under pressure, meteorologists around the world are becoming unwitting harbingers of doom as extreme weather grows ever more severe. Faced with censorship, denial and an emotional toll, they must confront a haunting question beneath an ever-darkening sky: how ...

BRUSSELS - Around 50,000 people are currently homeless in our country. We know they are there, and we seem to have come to terms with their situation. But why, exactly? Why is homelessness so low on the political agenda? Why are we failing to get these people off the streets? Are homeless people no ...

AMSTERDAM / GHENT – Can a burglary be predicted before it happens? According to the ambitious Bigdatpol project at Ghent University, this will soon become a reality. Led by Professor Wim Hardyns, the research team has spent years developing an AI model that can identify areas and times of high ...

BIHAĆ / ZAGREB – Behind the political debates on return hubs and stricter procedures lies an underlying trend that is receiving less attention: the roll-out of a state-of-the-art technological surveillance system at our external borders.

KHASAB / MUSCAT - The US and Iran continue to exchange attacks. US strikes are followed by Iranian retaliation, with targets including American bases in Gulf states such as Oman's Musandam exclave, which is separated from the rest of Oman by the United Arab Emirates and situated right on the Strait ...

SYRACUSE – The strictest European migration policy ever came into force in June. Through the Return Regulation, the EU is expanding its cooperation with third countries even further. NGOs have long been witnessing the human impact of externalisation policies, whereby border controls are outsourced ...

BRUSSELS / SAMOS – How has violence at Europe’s external borders become normalised, and what institutional, political and psychological mechanisms perpetuate it?

BRUSSELS - The film Returnees follows migrants in Belgium who are preparing for voluntary return.

TASHKENT / TERMZ / KABUL – The Taliban’s Qosh Tepa Canal is without a doubt a mega-project. It is being built in Afghanistan but will be fed by water from the Amu Darya – the region’s largest river, which lies on the border with Uzbekistan. For Uzbek farmers, this threatens to be a disaster. Europe ...

CONAKRY / RABAT - Thanks to Chinese investments, the West African nation of Guinea is on track for annual economic growth of 10 percent. But Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah does not want the country to become too dependent on China and is also inviting Europe to invest. Morocco, too, is undergoing ...

BROOKLYN – Amidst pastel colours, carefully styled product photos and phrases such as “made with love”, “authentic” and “sustainable”, the online marketplace Etsy promises an alternative to the anonymous mass production of fast fashion. It seems that anyone who shops here is not supporting a factory ...

KORTRIJK / WEVELGEM - The airport of Kortrijk-Wevelgem is the least well-known of the three regional airports in Flanders. It is considerably smaller than the airports in Antwerp and Ostend, particularly in terms of passenger numbers. Yet Kortrijk-Wevelgem is not spared from criticism either.

BRUSSELS - Our Big Five is the compelling and surprising story of the most iconic inhabitants of our natural world. Our Big Five: the fox, red deer, wolf, seal, and lynx. Paul Cobbaert sets out in wonder to find these animals. He wants to know where they live, whether they’re endangered, and how ...

GHENT - Psychedelics are illegal, but show great therapeutic promise and are on the verge of medical acceptance. If clinical research and the claims of pharmaceutical start-ups are to be believed, psychedelics may well become the latest weapon in the fight against conditions such as depression ...

POLINKHOVE / ANTWERP – Every Flemish citizen has the right to add a question or a proposal to the municipal council’s agenda. Research by Apache shows that around a quarter of Flemish towns and municipalities do not have regulations setting out the conditions for doing so.

ZUGDIDI - The 250-kilometre border between Abkhazia and Georgia has been dividing the two countries for decades, making life increasingly difficult for the communities living along it. Caught between Russian pressure and the manoeuvrings of the ruling Georgian Dream party, those living near the ...

KILEMBE - Since the first measurements were taken in 1906, more than 90% of the ice in the Rwenzori Mountains on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has disappeared. Experts predict it will be gone entirely within a decade.

CERRO DE PASCO - The city of Cerro de Pasco lies at an altitude of 4,380 metres in the harsh climate of the Peruvian Andes. It is one of the highest cities in the world, but also one of the most polluted, as there is a huge pit right in the centre of the city.

AMSTERDAM / MAE SOT - A message on Instagram: "Hi darling. I’ve been thinking about you a lot today… Are you thinking of me too?" It's a typical scam. But these scammers are victims themselves, often lured by false promises and imprisoned in scam centres in Southeast Asia.

HAVANA - The US is imposing an oil embargo on Cuba with the aim of bringing about regime change. Professor Domínguez López of the University of Havana stresses that the current problems cannot be viewed in isolation from more than sixty years of US sanctions. Those sanctions have never given Cuba ...

MADRID - When a military coup took place in Spain in 1936, followed by a civil war, as many as 2,400 volunteers left our country to fight on the side of the democratically elected Second Republic (1931–1939), first with the militias in the Basque Country and Catalonia, and later with the ...

NEW YORK / BRUSSEL - A study of bias in Western media reporting. Using a case study on the war in Afghanistan, we examine how journalists reported on the fight against ‘terrorism’ during America’s longest war and investigate the structural patterns that have shaped the narrative surrounding this ...

SANTIAGO DE CHILE - On the American continent, the large northward migration flow is gradually drying up, due to Trump’s tough anti-immigration measures. But what about other migration flows in the region, between Latin American countries themselves?

KINSHASA - Marlies Geyskens travels to Kinshasa, a city of millions that has been struggling with a growing mountain of rubbish in recent years. There, she follows two local artists who make costumes from recycled materials.

ACCRA - In Destination Ghana, we follow four people from the African diaspora. Each has a different life story, but there is also something that connects them: none of them has ever set foot on the African continent

BOGOTA - Just as in the rest of Latin America, Pentecostal churches are on the rise in Colombia. They promote a personal relationship with God, place great emphasis on the emotional aspect, and promote prophecies and miracles. However, many of these churches also have clear political objectives.

KAMPALA - Uganda has for years hosted the largest refugee population in Africa, long celebrated as a regional success story thanks to its progressive open-door policy. But sweeping global cuts to development aid, most dramatically the dismantling of USAID under Trump, have plunged that system of ...

BRUSSELS - Humiliating language, a common mobile phone number, an age that does not match the photo shown: one in three Brussels sex profiles on Quartier Rouge and Redlights show signs that something is not right.

TERVUREN / LUBUMBASHI - The increasing pressure on the Africa Museum to return artefacts has taken a new turn. The US, Congo and the EU are keen to digitise the museum's geological archives from the colonial era and gain access to information about the subsoil of Central Africa and its potential ...