Supported projects

LUXEMBOURG - Migrants are victims of mistreatment and exploitation by their relatives and friends in the heart of Europe. This story shows how in Luxembourg some of the poorest migrants face injustice which needs to be exposed and addressed.

SERREKUNDA - Irregular migration from West Africa to the Spanish Canary Islands has risen from 2,700 boat refugees in 2019 to over 23,000 in 2020. This has caused a great deal of social and political concern. 

ANKARA - Turkey has been using its vast presence in Europe and official institutions such as mosques, consulates and institutions in an effort to track its dissidents using covert Turkish intelligence activities.

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 ...

ANTWERP - The 40-year war in Afghanistan is pushing more and more Afghans to become refugees. Their numbers are also increasing in Belgium. In the port city of Antwerp, Afghans have become the fifth largest nationality group. Gie Goris went to Antwerp and listened to older and younger, male and ...

NAIROBI - This story uncovers a multitude of worrying allegations about the unregulated surrogacy industry in Kenya.

TRIPOLI - How much do illegal immigrants suffer from smuggling networks? How do the illegal immigrants get in contact with the smugglers? What is the role of the international community in curbing the spread of this business? Investigative journalist Mahmoud Elsobky searched for answers to these ...

TIRANA - Over the past 30 years, Albania has evolved at breakneck speed from an extreme communist dictatorship to an unbridled neoliberal democracy. This makes the country an interesting laboratory for contemporary social developments, such as migration, identity construction or gender and the ...

FREETOWN - Sierra Leone is one of the least developed countries in the world. Two of the main out of many challenges the West African state is facing are rampant corruption and some of the lowest educational outcomes worldwide.

BERLIN - From Croatia to France, from Germany to Italy, a team of journalists came across cases of sexual harassment and sexualised violence in physician-patient interactions.

SARAJEVO - On April 13 2020, the number of deaths due to the Coronavirus in Italy exceeded 20,000. That same afternoon, Saeed carefully packed his bag in the migrant camp of Lipa, Bosnia. Three portable charging batteries, a box of cigarettes, a sleeping bag, and a picture of his two children back ...

JEREVAN - How many girls among ethnic minorities in Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine face early marriage? Is there accurate data on this phenomenon in these countries? How do governments react and do all the strategies work? What do members of ethnic communities think of early marriages?

TURÓW - For years Poland has been ignoring complaints of border residents on the Czech-German-Polish tri-border, where groundwater is declining as a result of a combination of the climate crisis and mining activity. The Czech Republic has a great chance of succeeding in a lawsuit before the European ...

More than 70% of the members of criminal groups detained and convicted are foreigners themselves. That is, citizens of other countries who have residence permits in Ukraine. Foreign students or seasonal workers are involved in transporting their compatriots to the European Union. 

COPENHAGEN - The international humanitarian organisation Humana runs a recycling business in Europe worth more than 100 million euros. However, only 13% of their earnings appear to end up in the developing world.

CAÏRO - Can you love a dictatorship? Well, no, but the Belgian journalist Ruth Vandewalle does not want to leave Egypt after more than ten years. Ten years after Tahrir, she goes looking for answers among her Egyptian friends. Their solution: create your own reality.

KYIV - The unregulated surrogacy sphere in Ukraine, controls at the external border of the European Union as well as the closed borders and restrictions on movement introduced in 2020 due to COVID-19, lead to questionable decisions like moving Ukrainian women across the border to Poland to continue ...

AL HOCEIMA - During the summer holidays, Europeans with a Moroccan migration background flock to Al Hoceima. For two months, the tourist resort in the Rif region is flourishing and there is work again. But it's only a little solace for the Rifine population that has to deal with a corrupt government ...

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 ...

KATHMANDU - As countries in Eastern Europe increasingly face the problem of lack of workforce, they are turning to a new source of workers – Asian countries, especially Nepal. But often those workers are abused on the way during their journey to Europe and exploited in the destination countries ...

NAIROBI - European media regularly report on human rights violations by multinational companies 'from here'. Various Flemish media reported that a Brussels construction company would engage in forced labour in Qatar in preparation for the World Cup. Swedish journalists Tobias Åkerblom and Moa ...

MINSK / VILNIUS - A cross-border investigation by Lithuanian and Belarusian journalists follows the trail of Alexander Zaytsev and Aliaksei Aleksin, two Belarusian businessmen considered to be close to the Alexander Lukashenko's regime.

AUSTIN - Louise Van Assche is a documentary filmmaker who lives and works in Austin, Texas. She was born and raised in Belgium and has Congolese roots. A year ago she moved to Austin, the capital of Texas. There she ended up in the middle of the Black Lives Matter protests. It touched her personally ...

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.

BRUSSELS - This is the first article in a series on homelessness focusing on the Belgian capital city, where homelessness has more than doubled in ten years.

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 ...

FALTECINI - Belgian police and army uniforms are made in Romanian factories with Belgian owners, by seamstresses who can barely make a living from their wages. What is wrong with our public tenders? "As long as price remains the most important award criterion, someone always pays the price.

NEW YORK - The documentary 'Pride is Protest' offers an insight into the LGBTQ scene in New York, 50 years after Stonewall. Marieke Dermul and Filip Tielens went to New York for a week in June 2019 during the biggest Pride ever.

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 ...

DHAKA - The women in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka are fed up with it: they want to be able to go out on the streets without men bothering them. And so they organise their own transport through the impossibly chaotic, congested traffic: a motor-taxi with a woman at the wheel.