Supported projects

OSLO – It’s a global problem that is becoming increasingly prevalent. According to aid organisations, digital image-based sexual abuse – a catch-all phrase that includes “revenge porn”, deepfake pornography and “upskirting” – exploded across European countries during the pandemic.

RIO DE JANEIRO - Vila Cruzeiro is one of Rio de Janeiro's most dangerous slums. People are living in poverty surrounded by a drug war. After far-right president Jair Bolsonaro took office, shootings between police and traffickers are much more frequent. Violence in the neighbourhoods is only ...

NIVELLES - State police commander Léon François starts using questionable investigative methods in the fight against drug traffickers in the 1970s, without legal regulation. Who are the gangsters and who is the police? The boundaries blur. Top cops and politicians, ex-premier Vanden Boeynants in the ...

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 ...

BRUSSELS - What happened to Dieumerci Kanda? Six years ago, the Angolan man entered a Brussels police station to report his missing wallet. For no apparent reason, he is arrested and locked up in a cell. Three hours later he's dead. The official explanation is that he killed himself. But isn't there ...

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.

BRUSSELS - A lot goes wrong with our tax collection. There are so many loopholes that the tax authorities collect a lot less than what the state is entitled to. This is one of the reasons why the government has to borrow and why we have a large national debt.

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. 

BIHAC - Western Bosnia and Herzegovina is a bottleneck for migrants and refugees who are fleeing across the Balkans. Many of them are caught en route to Northern or Western Europe on Slovenian territory, from where they are being systematically handed over to Croatian authorities in the last year ...

CAPETOWN - South Africa is seen as the most western country in Africa. It is not being investigated by the International Criminal Court, but is however planning to leave it. What is going on?

MOSCOW - Nostalgia or Revolution? Pieter Stockmans and photographer Mashid Mohadjerin travel through a number of important cities in European Russia to capture the revolutionary forces in 2017, 100 years after the Russian revolution of 1917.

BRUSSELS - Since 1999, companies are subject to appear before criminal courts for the crimes they commit. How often did this happen? When did it not happen? For what reason? What punishment did the public prosecutor ask for if the case did go to court? And what punishment did the judge pronounce?

LUXEMBURG - Google notifies media and information sites when an article is delinked from its search engine after a Right to be Forgotten request is approved. These notifications can reviewed, collected in a database, deleted or ignored. Which criteria does Google follow to accept or refuse a request ...

GENEVA - The 20th century has been marked by the granting of a wide range of rights to different segments of society. But for some of these rights, we haven't yet found the ideal democratic ways of organising them. Three cases.

PALERMO - An investigation into the contemporary Italian mafia in Europe. Or how the mafia made its way to the Low Countries.

BRUSSELS - A completely new view on the Fortis-case and especially on the very closed deliberation procedure in the magistracy. Wim Van den Eyndes book Fortisgate raises serious questions about the functioning of the judiciary in Belgium.

BRUSSELS - In the Netherlands, it has been possible for years: a visit to the Nationaal Archief (National Archive) to find out what your grandfather or grandmother's wartime past was. In Belgium, however, these archives remain closed, for fear that 'certain passions' will flare up. Anoek Nuyens and ...

ANTWERP - Smuggling, fraud and tax evasion have been the order of the day in the diamond business in Antwerp for decades. The diamond merchants in the 'Square Mile' are living in a vacuum, in a social and judicial bubble that is sustained in part because of the cooperation of politicians and ...

MADRID - In the decade since the Madrid bombings of March 11 2004 over 500 people have been arrested for alleged links to islamic terrorism. Only 50 have been convicted. Spain, like most of the EU States, has implemented a Preventive Justice approach to pursue Islamic terrorism. Police and judges ...

NIVELLES - 17 Raids between 1982 and 1985, 28 dead, more than 40 injured, barely 175,000 euros in loot and no one convicted. The Nivelles Gang is the largest unresolved judicial file in Belgium. Hilde Geens did what someone rarely does: she read the judicial files about the Nivelles Gang and ...

SAINTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA - This book is based on thirty memorable life stories of youngsters who set out on a walk. How do they remember the trek? How do they look back on it? What did that journey mean for the rest of their lives? Also thirty compagnons voice their thoughts - parents, counselors and ...

PRISTINA - From 1999 to 2008, nine years after the Kosovo War, Kosovo was administered by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

SALÉ - On 27 July, Abdelkader Belliraj was sentenced to life imprisonment by the court in Salé. The Moroccan judicial authorities found that Belliraj had committed six murders in Belgium, smuggled weapons into Morocco, laundered money, and led a terrorist network.

BRUSSELS - Belgium is a magnet for foreign intelligence services. The mere presence of the European institutions and NATO on Belgian soil attracts a large number of spies. European leaders are bugged, and secret NATO files are passed on to the enemy. But that is not all. Foreign spies are ...

BRUSSELS - Belgium is home to countless international organisations, as well as a large number of politically active refugees and migrants. This makes our country attractive to espionage and foreign intelligence services.