Supported projects

Journalists Majd Khalifeh and Pieter Stockmans, and photographer Xander Stockmans travel across North Africa and the Middle East for 5 months in search of dreams of freedom and happiness of ordinary people, workers, doctors, activists, young people, imams, priests, professors, trade union leaders, journalists, politicians,... They let the people behind the revolutions speak and share their dreams with Europe.

Korneel De Rynck travels along the railway line, through Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, along places that recall death and destruction. He investigates what happened back then and what changed since the end of the war. Do the people live together again? Did the circumstances that led to war disappear?

'In de Keuken van het Compromis' is a fascinating view behind the scenes of the Council of Ministers. Here, the idea of European unity is not at all obvious. Also, when ministers are occupied with national matters, diplomats seem to have a substantial influence in shaping European decisions.

targetBRUSSELS gathers information on the activities of Eastern European secret services in Brussels during the Cold War. The research is based on the intelligence archives of the former German Democratic Republic, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania.

Sub Saharan refugees and migrants get stranded in Libya, one of the most important transit countries, on their way to Europe. The European Union tries to keep migrants from reaching Europe by making expensive deals with the Libyan Government. 

Xinjiang is a province of China, with the statute of ‘Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’ under control of the central Chinese government. It is very Chinese and at the same time it seems not Chinese at all. Xinjiang borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. It has a climate that is barely appropriate for human life with temperatures of minus 30 to plus 48, with strong dessert winds that regularly cover everything in dust and sand. It is one of the areas on earth furthest away from the sea.

YAMOUSSOUKRO - More than eight years into the Ivorian conflict and on the eve of the presidential elections which are meant to signal the end of violence, Abidjan's former militias are still very much a tangible presence in the southern part of the country. Beyond occasionally voicing their discontent over the unsettled 1000-dollar demobilisation fee, ex-militia members are active in ways that were difficult to predict when they first emerged in the early days of the conflict. In view of the upcoming elections it is important to assess the militias' involvement in politics and vice-versa.

Uyuni is a backward region in the South of Bolivia. Bult the salt lake of Uyuni is rich with lithium, the commodity for the production of batteries, soon also for batteries for electrical vehicles. For this raw material a game of chess is being played between some multinational companies, the people of Uyuni and Bolivia's government.

KIEV - For more than 40 years Tatyana Jablonskaya's name and signature have been the pride of soviet realism's paintings. Her masterpieces, vibrant, popular scenes of a dream life in the USSR, illustrated communist propaganda appearing everywhere from reproductions in schoolbooks and political booklets to exhibitions in art museums all across the USSR. But now increasingly, original paintings of Jablonskaya's are disappearing, ever more forged versions taking their place.

ISLAMABAD -- The American president Obama described a part of Pakistan as ‘the most dangerous place on earth’. The country is dangerous in two ways: dangerous to itself, as few places yield as many bomb attacks and victims, but also dangerous to the rest of the world, as the bombings are exported and Pakistan is a nuclear power, with ‘Islamic’ bombs that are perhaps not sufficiently secured.