Supported projects

MOL - Recent research shows that deep in our genes we are easterners. We are largely descended from steppe peoples who crossed into Europe five thousand years ago.

GALWAY - For months now, the North Atlantic has been plagued by extreme heat waves. The new high-tech research vessel the Belgica is sailing to the polar regions for the first time to document and investigate the effects of climate change in the oceans. Journalists Arno Van Rensbergen and Johannes De Bruycker went on board for a week.

KINSHASA - Following on from the first part of the dossier on why and how Congo's forests became the world's first lung, John Vandaele explores whether the country can effectively be the 'solution country' it claims to want to be.

EUROPE - Twenty years ago the first SARS outbreak gave the warning. But Europe has failed to prepare for the Covid-19 pandemic due to a lack of funding for drug research and may still fail to prepare for the next pandemuc, argue several prominent scientists interviewed by Stefano Valentino and Gian Paolo Accardo.

ROTTERDAM - The Port of Rotterdam claims to champion sustainability but is the reality matching its marketing?

GEORGETOWN - On behalf of US oil giant ExxonMobil, Belgian company Jan de Nul (together with partners) is building an artificial island off the coast of Guyana, South America.

AMSTERDAM - Shell knows the ways to the highest circles as well as the shortcuts through the political swamps. The oil and gas giant operates in 70 countries. Most are not democratic constitutional states. Shell - until recently Royal Dutch Shell - has to deal daily with weak or autocratic governments, corruption, unrest, war and terrorism. How does it navigate through these?

GITEGA - 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 to better understand the reasons and meanings of this discrepancy as well as it brings the needs and experiences of these women to the centre of the conversation. 

BRUSSELS - How Nigerian girls are forced into Belgian prostitution. In 2018, 21-year-old Eunice Osayande is murdered on the streets of Brussels. The Nigerian woman was smuggled into Belgium with the false promise of becoming a hairdresser here and having a better life than in Nigeria.