Supported projects

BELGRADE - Writer and historian Irene van der Linde and documentary photographer Nicole Segers travel in the footsteps of the British writer Rebecca West through former Yugoslavia and Albania. With West's magnum opus Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) in their hands, they go in search of the meaning ...

DAMASCUS - French humanitarian NGO SOS Chrétiens d’Orient (SOSCO) claims to support persecuted Christians in Syria and the wider Middle East without interfering in conflicts or local politics. But in reality, the seven-year-old NGO - which was founded by far-right, conservative, Catholic activists - ...

KINSHASA - The research by Jeroen Janssen, awarded graphic novelist, and journalist Hilde Baele on Mzee Jérôme Sebasoni, who became Che Guevara's guide as a young Inyenzi rebel, took no less than 12 years.

YEREVAN - In 2018, Armenian citizens overthrew an authoritarian regime in a mass movement. Now, they are taking on an international mining company. Over the past few years, activists and locals have blockaded Lydian International’s flagship $400 million Amulsar gold mining project due to its ...

ANKARA - Turkish communities living in Europe were affected politically by the 15 July 2016 unsuccessful coup d’état.  At least twenty-three Turkish citizens, political opponents of Erdogan, were abducted by the authorities of Bulgaria, Moldova, Kosovo, Ukraine, and Serbia and sent back to Turkey ...

PODGORICA - The Malta-based Shift News in collaboration with the largest Montenegrin daily DAN launched an investigation into the Sino-Maltese wind farm project in Montenegro underhandedly backed by Montenegro's ruling clique and Azerbaijani businesses present both in Malta and Montenegro.

MOSCOW - Vladimir Putin's Russia increasingly poses a security risk to Europe as it has become more and more aggressive in recent years, especially since the annexation of Crimea and occupation of Donbas. Russia has also committed assassinations on European soil, including the attempted ...

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. 

ANTANANARIVO - When the news from Beijing reached Madagascar on September 6th, 2018, that a deal of 2.7 billion USD was signed on the country’s “blue economy” with China, people in the second largest island country panicked. Rightfully so. Nobody, including the fishing ministry, had heard of such a ...

TEHERAN - It is now more than a year since the US unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear agreement with Iran. Since then, the Iranian economy has suffered the stiff sanctions, while unemployment and poverty in the country are rising. Whatever the Americans want to achieve with this, their policy ...

ANTWERP - Documents that Apache and Le Vif were able to look into show how Erik Van der Paal - the protegee of N-VA chairman and mayor of Antwerp, Bart De Wever - and his Dutch companion Marc Schaling extracted millions of euros from Land Invest for six years. All this time, the project developer ...

BRUSSELS - Across Europe, misinformation campaigns launched online by a handful of people, ahead of the European Union elections in May 2019. The series of articles reveals the most common misinformation techniques and goes behind the scenes to meet those who fight it.

ANTWERP / BRUSSELS - Journalist Pieter Bauwens traveled around Flanders (Belgium) for three months to speak with members of the Flemish nationalist party N-VA (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie). It learned him how the N-VA has become a power party and let him to draw seven conclusions about the party.

USA - Rudi Rotthier traveled through The United States of America and found nuance alongside persevering anger, bitterness alongside resistance, and most of all, a lot of misunderstanding.

ANKARA - Turkey and the EU need each other. Even in a context of tense relations, harsh rhetoric and a near dead accession process, they approach each other. In anticipation of a marriage that may never come, there is cooperation in various areas today. Think of the refugee deal, counter-terrorism ...

BURUNDI - Bob Rugurika is the director of Radio Publique Africaine (RPA), the most popular independent radio station in Burundi. As an investigative journalist, he is also a forerunner in the fight for freedom of expression in his country, willing to risk his life to expose the truth. 

BRUSSELS - Un pays plus beau qu’avant is a film about the Congo made in Brussels. The wanderings of Jean Simon, a small time business man, reveal the outlines of a microcosm of informal commerce within the Congolese diaspora.

BELGIUM - Flanders and the Netherlands have a long tradition of silence about the disgraceful collaboration with the German occupiers during the Second World War. Twin brothers Hein and Toon Van den Brempt are determined to break that silence.

SYRIA - The caliphate is shrinking and ISIS is practically military defeated. But then what? Is ISIS a thing of the past? What remains of the terrorist group and what is there to expect? 

DUSHANBE - In October 2016, the authoritarian president of Tajikistan, Emomali Rachmon, pushed a pile of stones into the river Vachsh with a bulldozer. With this symbolic gesture he gave a new start to the construction of the Rogun dam which started in 1976. With 335 meters, Rogun has to become the ...

SYRIA - In his famous book 'Utopia', the English humanist Thomas More describes an ideal state. Ludo De Brabander travels around the 'Democratic Federation of Northern Syria' five centuries after publication. 

KINSHASHA - On the eve of postponed Congolese elections, two Congolese and two Belgian film-makers are working on a film about Kinshasa and its resistance to the legacies of colonialism. The four filmmakers want to tell a story together.

BRUSSELS - The European Social Fund (ESF) “is Europe’s main instrument for supporting jobs, helping people get better jobs and ensuring fairer job opportunities for all EU citizens”, according to the ESF website.

ROME - After a far-right supporter shot six African migrants in Italy, a headline on the Slovak news website Hlavne Spravy explained the tragedy as a retaliation for a murder of an Italian woman by a Nigerian man.

RAMALLAH - Palestinians better think twice before they marry. Many couples can't live together because their partner has another identity card.

SYRIA - Around 2014, several reports were published about the Kurdish women's armies. They were presented as courageous fighters who fought heroically against the ISIS. They stood out as a special appearance in the Middle East where usually men seem to make the decisions. They were feared by the ...

MYTILINI - In October 2017 cartoonists Judith Vanistendael, Aimée de Jongh and Mei-Li Nieuwland visited the refugee camps of Moria and Kara Tepe on Lesvos.

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.

ABUJA - The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) has been praised as a deal that will eventually liberalise trade between the European Union and the Economic Community of West African States.

BEIJING - In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping decided it was time to 'go out'. He launched the One Belt One Road (OBOR) project and wants to develop a train connection across the Eurasian continent and a maritime route into Europe.