Supported projects

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 ...

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 ...

DOBROGEA/ MORAVIA-SILESIA - Across Europe, public money is fuelling apparently high-tech projects that promise safety, innovation, and inclusion - yet both in Dobrogea and Ostrava, delivery on EU funded projects seems to lag behind the slogans and, in some cases, open up significant security risks.

BRUSSELS / RIGA – Utilising AI-driven analysis of Russian customs data, the Tools of War project uncovers the clandestine network of European companies that profited from supplying high-tech machinery to Russia's military, enhancing its capabilities prior to the invasion of Ukraine.

GHENT - In 2024, COPS, the elite team of police zone Ghent, was deployed several times against non-violent activists. Experts are concerned as the unit is increasingly being used for interventions against activists. As a result, the line between counterterrorism and interventions against activists ...

AUSTIN - When a Belgian filmmaker moves to Texas and becomes a mother, she is confronted with a reality barely comprehensible in Europe: preschoolers trained to keep quiet in a dark closet, schools deploying armed teachers and children crawling behind their school desks with an escape plan in mind.

RIGA - In February 2023, the European Union agreed on the 10th package of sanctions against Russian goods, including the import of bitumen. Despite these bans, 29,5 thousand tonnes of bitumen worth $7.8 million were exported from Russia to Latvia in 2023, as calculated by The Chronicles.Media using ...

DÜSSELDORF – Investigate Europe's 'Arming the World' project reveals how German arms giant Rheinmetall has been quietly pursuing its global expansion strategy by supplying ammunition factories abroad, away from public scrutiny.

ROME / PRAGUE / RIGA - A joint investigation by Investigace, IrpiMedia and The Insider has revealed how thousands of European and American small arms were smuggled into Russia and used in the war with Ukraine.

THE HAGUE - Since the war in Ukraine, dozens of Russian ‘research vessels’ have been making suspicious movements near critical infrastructure in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. This has been revealed by research conducted by VRT NWS in collaboration with media outlets in the Netherlands, Germany ...

JOHANNESBURG - South Africa, the queer paradise, or at least that is what is said. We know the images of the annual Pride in Johannesburg. As such, South Africa is the only country on the entire African continent in which LGBTQIA+ persons have equal rights, and can also marry. Only: the contrast ...

KIEV - Foreign journalists report plenty about the war in Ukraine, and that is dangerous enough. But they're helped by local journalists, "fixers," and they can't just avoid the situation in their country. What does that nonstop work do to these people?

SKOPJE / SARAJEVO – Five journalists from four Balkan countries have worked on the joint theme of climate security risks in the Balkan region

KYIV - Ukraine is investigating hundreds of firms, many created since Russia’s full-scale invasion scrambled the grain market, for allegedly failing to properly document their trading in Ukrainian grain or to pay taxes on it.

BRUSSELS - These women weren’t leading  the same battles, walking in the same streets or speaking in the same forums. Yet they were all victims of the same crime:  political feminicide.

BRUSSELS - 'Less police force' is a podcast that wants to make police violence in Belgium visible and unravel it through testimonies and interviews with experts. We want to find out why police violence - also in our country - is so common. This automatically brings us to the question: what are the ...

LJUBLJANA - What is the cost of security companies, such as G4S? One way of calculating the harm is counting the dead and the injured. 

MARIUPOL - The Sea of ​​Azov is the shallowest sea in the world. The entire region around the sea has been a battleground for centuries. Russia and Ukraine share control over the Sea of ​​Azov. In 2003, both countries reached an agreement about 'free navigation' for all.

KYIV - From the time it regained its independence in 1991 until the start of the war in the east, Ukraine remained one of the world's top ten arms exporters. However, not all transactions were legal. Ukraine and Ukrainian citizens have repeatedly been accused of international arms smuggling. Is ...

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.

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 ...

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.

NIAMEY - This is the first article of a year-long cross-border independent investigation into EU money invested in Niger for security purposes.

BRUSSELS - Protests against police are flaring up and are increasingly visible on the streets of Brussels. Among the demonstrators there are strikingly many young people. "We want change, and that only seems possible if we take matters into our own hands," shouts law student Amira (19), who is at ...

BEVEREN -‘Jailbirds’ intents to speak about the impact of the Covid-crisis and the lockdown, not only on a practical or economic level but to highlight mental processes and how it influences our psychological state. From a microcosmos: incarcerated life versus universal and collective uncertainty ...

MERKSPLAS - March 2020. Corona shuts down Belgium. Everyone has to stay inside. Door closed, one hour a day outside. A story that sounds familiar to the residents of Merksplas prison.

YAOUNDE - Over the past decades, a handful of Israelis have overseen and trained elite units of the Cameroonian army. Their paid services brought them millions of dollars, which they invested around the world. Meanwhile, the army unit they've trained, the BIR, has committed extensive human rights ...

BRUSSELS - There is very little transparency in the private security sector. Questions often remain unanswered because the contracts are withheld on the grounds of commercial confidentiality. This lack of information means it is hard if not impossible to speak truth to powerful private security ...

BRUSSELS - This investigation seeks to uncover the state of facial recognition technology in Europe. The journalists obtained leaked internal European Union documents that reveal law enforcement is lobbying to create a network of national police facial recognition databases. 

MECHELEN - Lon Landau is a promising Jewish set designer, whose life takes a dramatic turn during WWII. He's imprisoned in Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen, but he decides to remain optimistic and to do what he can best: build dream worlds.