Supported projects

BRATISLAVA/PRAGUE - This investigation reveals how Ukrainian women searching for accommodation are open to exploitation in online spaces.

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan is not so much a country with an army, but rather an army with a country. Like the black kite, a powerful bird of prey, the armed forces keep a close eye on the people of Pakistan.

NAYPYIDAW - When the Burmese Spring began more than a decade ago, and 50 years of dictatorship seemed to be coming to an end, trees were growing to the sky in Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi came to power and the country liberalized. After the Rohingya genocide, however, the honeymoon was over. And the ...

DELHI - India’s garment industry, valued at around 100 billion USD, employs 51 million people formally and another 68 million informally. As a key producer for Western nations and the second-largest textile exporter globally, the industry relies heavily on women, who make up over 70% of the ...

JERUSALEM / RAMALLAH - The war in Gaza has been going on for more than a year. Ethnic cleansing is taking place not only there, but also in the West Bank. It did not start after October 7, but has been going on for decades, stresses Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, among others. 

SOFIA/BUDAPEST - When people think of adoption, they think of poor countries in the global south. However, Flanders and the Netherlands adopt children from other European countries, such as Bulgaria and Hungary. This cross-border investigation shows that Roma children in these countries are ...

GOMA - After 25 years of blue helmets' presence in eastern Congo, 2024 was supposed to be the year of departure. But as the UN peacekeeping mission deploys the retreat, M23 rebels keep advancing. 

BAGDAD - Ten years ago, ISIS began its reign of terror in Iraq by invading Mosul. Many people were killed in the process. Minorities such as the Yazidis and Christians have received a lot of attention in this regard. Less well known is the plight of the Sunnis, the largest group, who lived under ...

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 ...

BARCELONA / THE HAGUE / ROME - Governments across Europe use predictive algorithms in courts, prisons and police stations.

CAÏRO - With the war in the Gaza Strip, negotiations on a billion-dollar deal between the European Union (EU) and Egypt gained momentum. In exchange for more financial support, the EU wants Egypt to keep its borders tightly guarded. The EU envisions a "golden age" of cooperation with Egypt. 

JAKARTA / AMSTERDAM - It sounded so appealing to become an Au Pair in Europe on paper. Unsurprisingly a website like AuPairWorld.com, which matches au pairs and host families, displays hundreds of profiles of young women advertising their baby-sitting skills.

ROME - NGOs carrying out rescue operations in the Mediterranean have been at odds with the Italian government for years. SOS MEDITERRANNEE claims to perform its duty as mandated by international maritime law. Italy fights back with administrative sanctions.

BERLIN / BRAZZAVILLE / LA PAZ -  The German Federal Development Ministry's Legacy Landscapes Fund appears to be linked to human rights abuses and toleration of environmental destruction. Conservation areas across Africa, Asia, and South America are allegedly subjected to community maltreatment and ...

KARACHI - Top clothing brands in the EU are hesitant to fully eliminate child and bonded labour from their supply chain from Pakistan, one of the biggest producers of cotton and one of the largest textile exporters to the EU.

IRELAND/GREECE - Interpretation is a vital but under-investigated aspect of the international asylum application process.

VALLETTA - A cross-border team of 8 journalists confirmed 1,015 unmarked graves of migrants in 65 cemeteries buried over the last 10 years across Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta, Poland, Lithuania, France, and Croatia.

WARSAW – What brings a motley crew of British lawyers, Polish psychologists, American paediatricians, Malaysian church leaders and German doctors to a hotel on the outskirts of a European capital city? 

BERLIN - For almost four years, left-wing politicians, mostly of Kurdish origin, have been receiving death threats from social media accounts that share the far-right ideology of the Turkish Ülkücü (Grey Wolves) movement.

SOBIBOR - After Auschwitz, Sobibor is the largest Dutch mass grave with more than 34,000 Dutch victims. Starting in 1942, more than 170,000 Jews were gassed here in a year and a half immediately upon arrival. Yet few people know about this death camp. After a successful prisoner uprising in October ...

LEUVEN - In the project "Does the Appeltans process bring an end to more than 20 years of slum landlords?" Arne Sonck investigated the power of slum landlords in Leuven. He brings to light how the Leuven landlord Appeltans was able to build a real estate empire by coloring outside the lines, and why ...

BERLIN/COPENHAGEN/BERLIN - In the not-so-distant past, the concept of offshore immigration policies, which involve shifting the responsibility of processing asylum claims to a different country, was largely associated with populist far-right ideologies.

DAMASCUS - In No Man's Land, Middle East expert Willem Staes travels across Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. During nine trips between August 2021 and March 2023, he will see for himself how Syrian refugees find themselves in the most hopeless situation since the Syrian revolution in 2011.

CALAIS - 'The Channel: Lost at Sea' will tell the stories of those who have gone missing while making the crossing by small boat from France to the UK.

BRUSSELS - Forced sterilisation of women with disabilities is criminalised in only nine EU countries. This investigation in Spain, France, Hungary and Sweden proves that the eugenics-based practice is still going on in Europe at a time when the European Parliament is debating its outlawing.  

BRUSSELS - A team of reporters have investigated the impact of the first-ever application of the Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) by the EU to Ukrainian refugees.

KYIV - Ukraine's war against Russia strengthens Ukrainian national identity and reduces the influence of Russian language and culture in society.

MANILA / AMSTERDAM - There is an invisible workforce keeping homes in the Netherlands spotless. Filipino cleaners run about Dutch cities each day, their packs filled with dozens of jingling keys. They are part of a community of thousands of undocumented migrants who clean homes in the Netherlands ...

GITEGA / BELGRADO - The Burundi Balkan Route offered several thousand Burundians a way out of their homeland in crisis in 2022.

BRUSSELS - What prevents a woman with FGM from going to the doctor? While there are more and more survivors of female genital mutilation (FGM) living in Belgium, strikingly very few visit the healthcare centres for women with FGM in the country. Through an in-depth investigation, this project aims ...