NAYPYIDAW - This is a story that describes the downfall of the financial sector of Myanmar after the military coup in February 2021. Due to a history of nationalisations and demonetisations, people and businesses lost trust in the banks immediately after the coup. That resulted in a bankrun.
BRUSSELS - Money is Petar's main reason for becoming a long-distance truck driver: it can give his child a future. But as the weeks and months go by, Petar feels his dreams slipping through his fingers.
BRUSSELS - The sperm bank appeals to the imagination. Especially its pioneering years, when there were no rules and doctors did as they pleased. Yet hardly anyone knows how it used to be, because donor insemination happened in the greatest secrecy.
AKIAK - In the fight against global warming, the Arctic is one of the most important front lines. There, the earth is warming three times faster than average.
NAIROBI - Kenya's attorney general's office opened a corruption and fraud investigation in 2019. The dams were supposed to bring water and electricity. Nothing is left at the site.
Peat Pressure: Extraction Industry Faces Crackdown
DERRYCRAVE - As part of a cross-border project to investigate the peat extraction industries in Ireland and Latvia, the Irish investigative platform Noteworthy has examined the impacts of unlicensed peat extraction across the country. The findings reveal a system of largely unregulated peat ...
JOKKMOKK - Sweden is trying at all costs to switch to renewable energy by 2040. But this is coming up against fierce protests from environmentalists and members of the local Sami reindeer communities who oppose the colonisation of Sapmi - the land of the Sami.
GOMBE - Is return an answer to racism? Youth worker, activist and opinion maker Don Pandzou (34), a Belgian youngster with Congolese roots, finds out. Growing up in Belgium was not an easy experience for Don. Racism and discrimination left emotional scars.
BUDAPEST - Hungary during the 2022 election campaign: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán exercises a degree of media control that is unparalleled in the EU. A group of young journalists is taking on state propaganda. This documentary by Bence Máté and Áron Szentpéteri features exclusive footage and ...
BRUSSELS - “Are we, as mainstream media, doing our job well enough?” It's a question that has preoccupied VRT investigative journalist Luc Pauwels for years. Because he sees too many worrying warning signs.
BRUSSELS - In March 1922, Belgian philologist Théophile Simar published a study entitled Étude critique sur la formation de la doctrine des races au XVIIIe siècle et son expansion au XIXe siècle. In it, the term ‘racism’ is used in a scientific context for the first time. A hundred years later, the ...
BRUSSELS - For years, the Belgian political world rolled out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs. That truth is now becoming all the more painfully clear.
Romania, the new mirage for the Asian workers’ « European dream »
BUCHAREST - Facing an acute labor shortage and a drastic decrease in population, Romania has allowed tens of thousands of South and East Asian workers, from Vietnam, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, into the country. The investigation is following the path of Vietnamese and Indians workers ...
MINSK - 72 Hours That Changed Belarus tells the story of the post-election collapse of human rights in the country through the first-hand experiences of those affected the most: a young couple injured by a stun grenade, a recent law graduate who documented torture and later fled to protect herself ...
ANTWERP - The pollution around the 3M plant near Antwerp (Belgium) has been known for years. Yet the PFOS scandal did not erupt in Flanders until the spring of 2021.
BRUSSELS - On the occasion of International Women's Day on 8 March, three generations of women spend three days together. Twentysomething Cosima Bas and her mother Anna Luyten dig into the life wisdom of the oldest. This is Chantal De Smet (76), a striking figure of the second feminist wave in ...
Shortage of sign language interpreters: fight to be heard
BRUSSELS - Wout Van der Steen is an 8-year-old deaf boy from Wuustwezel. His parents are happy to let him go to a mainstream school, where he is entitled to an interpreter of Flemish Sign Language. This interpreter translates everything, both what the teacher says and what his classmates say.
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.