Supported projects

KINSHASA – Échos du Silence explores the history surrounding human remains from the Congo that have been held in Belgium since the colonial period, and addresses issues relating to provenance, restitution, the transfer of knowledge and the dignity of the dead.

BOGOTA - Just as in the rest of Latin America, Pentecostal churches are on the rise in Colombia. They promote a personal relationship with God, place great emphasis on the emotional aspect, and promote prophecies and miracles. However, many of these churches also have clear political objectives.

NOUAKCHOTT - In the Sahel, Mauritania is the only country spared from jihadist incursions and large-scale violence. Meanwhile, nearly two hundred thousand Malian refugees are staying both in the Mauritanian refugee camp of M'bera and in the villages of the Hodh Chargui border region.

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.

JERUZALEM - Three friends with three different faiths travel together to the cradle of their religions: Jerusalem. They want to discover what they have in common and what divides them. But soon they are confronted with the harsh realities of conflict.

BRUSSELS - Unknown is unloved, especially when it comes to liberal funerary heritage. Gravestones of freethinkers and other "sinners" have been neglected, forgotten or simply disappeared. And yet, things can be different. Three stories about "dog corners," the neglected memorial of the co-founder of ...

LALIBELA - The rock churches of Lalibela in northern Ethiopia are world heritage sites. But during the civil war, the village was occupied by civilian militias of the Tigray Army (TPLF) fighting the government army. The soldiers left Lalibela as a ghost village.

TBILISI - The project investigates the patterns of forming Russian propaganda messages and their dissemination in Georgian and Moldovan churches based on human sources and stories.

ROME - An investigation for Byline Times by the Citizens and il Fatto Quotidiano can exclusively reveal how a Catholic charity is being run by a former National Front member who has promoted a number of conspiracy theories and fundraised for a far-right Italian politician who was arrested and ...

DAKAR - Kris Berwouts went to Senegal with the question: 'What are Senegal's strengths and vulnerabilities when it comes to the risk of jihadism spilling over from the Sahel? This received a boost in 2012 in Mali and has since rapidly spread to Burkina Faso and Niger.

BRUSSELS / AMSTERDAM - Jehovah's Witnesses are a large, global church community. Most people know them from their door-to-door visits. In recent years, they have been in the spotlight because of allegations of child abuse and the exclusion of former members.

JERUSALEM - The grounds around the Al-Aqsa Mosque are probably the most explosive powder keg of Israel and indeed the entire Middle East at the moment. The shrine in East Jerusalem has been the scene of violent clashes between Israeli riot police and Palestinian worshippers in recent weeks. But ...

KABUL - Even after the anniversary of 9/11, one question remains unanswered: how did Osama bin Laden manage to carry out that murderous raid against the most powerful country in the world? Exceptional testimonies from the heart of the al-Qaeda terrorist movement provide an answer.

GEZNAKH - Atra is a documentary about Alexandro Yaramis' search for roots. He travels through former North Mesopotamia. He crosses Assyrian settlements that are in the middle of the conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK. When he hears that a church is being built in his father's village ...

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 - ...

CABO DELGADO - There are diamonds, gold and a gigantic gas bubble in the ground, but that doesn't help the inhabitants of Cabo Delgado, Mozambique. The government abandons them and the army can't protect them from violence. The militant Islamist group Al-Shabab manages more and more to recruit the ...

KABUL - Now that the Taliban is constantly threatening with attacks on polling stations and other places, it is fearful to see what the Afghan presidential elections of September 28 will bring. But everyone is convinced that they must continue: “The Taliban cannot stop us anymore. It's too late for ...

ARBIL - In the summer of 2014, IS invaded the Sinjar region in northern Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of residents fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, or to Mount Sinjar, not knowing that help would come days later. Without food or water many died of exhaustion. But IS had come not only to expand the Caliphate ...

ZAGREB - Although women have the legal right to abortion across the vast majority of countries in Europe, women in some east European countries are finding it tougher to terminate pregnancies. Our grantees looked into examples of Croatia, Romania, and Poland.

IRAN - The Iranians are caught between two fires today. On the one hand they suffer the American sanctions, on the other hand there are many domestic issues to overcome. During the "Nowruz" period, we investigated this stifling position with various teams across Iran. The story about Nowruz ...

SENEGAL / ALGERIA / MOROCCO - Sufism is experiencing a real revival in the Muslim world after a long period of decay and even persecution. In countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Senegal, Turkey, there is a clear revival both in religious and political terms, and this has its consequences for migrant ...

INDIA - Being transgender seems to be a fairly recent concept in Belgium and the Netherlands, but in India there has been a deep-rooted culture around the third sex for centuries.

UGANDA - In “Bewitched”, Daan Bauwens, Rien Bauwens and Yann Verbeke head to Uganda. A team of young Ugandan psychologists visits fishing villages on the shores of Lake Victoria. They are going to tell that there is such a thing as mental health and that it it can be helpful to talk about it ...

EL SALVADOR - "When I woke up in the hospital, there were police officers around me. They said that I had killed my child." Maria Teresa De Rivera is 34 when she gets a miscarriage on the toilet. Due to strict abortion laws in her country, she is sentenced to 40 years in prison. She not only loses a ...

KABUL - During a visit to Dutch troops in Afghanistan in 2006, journalist Bette Dam discovered how little the military knew about their enemy. She left the military camp to investigate the feared taliban leader mullah Omar.

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? 

BELGIUM - There is no form of religion that politicians and commentators are as concerned about as Salafism. The young men with their beards full of religion and women dressed in long, wavy robes with black stretch gloves have become the symbol of backwardness, of an Islam that does not belong to ...

EGYPT - In Belgium lives a small, unknown minority from the Middle East: Coptic Christians from Egypt. For many, migration was a choice for a better life, others point to the penal position of Copts as a minority in Egypt.

DAMASCUS - The Egyptian journalist Mahmoud Elsobky and the Palestinian television reporter and former UN employee Fady Alghorra spent a year searching, undercover, for online violent jihadist propaganda.

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 ...