Supported projects

SOFIA/BUDAPEST - When people think of adoption, they think of poor countries in the global south. However, Flanders and the Netherlands adopt children from other European countries, such as Bulgaria and Hungary. This cross-border investigation shows that Roma children in these countries are discriminated against and end up in the adoption system due to stigma, poverty and a lack of support for families.

GOMA - After 25 years of blue helmets' presence in eastern Congo, 2024 was supposed to be the year of departure. But as the UN peacekeeping mission deploys the retreat, M23 rebels keep advancing. 

BAGDAD - Ten years ago, ISIS began its reign of terror in Iraq by invading Mosul. Many people were killed in the process. Minorities such as the Yazidis and Christians have received a lot of attention in this regard. Less well known is the plight of the Sunnis, the largest group, who lived under ISIS occupation and were oppressed and killed. They were subsequently lumped together with the radicals by many.

MEXICO-CITY - Like in India or the United States, Mexicans will elect a new head of state in 2024. That must spend the next six years dealing with the dubious legacy of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. 'Whoever comes to power, the oppression of indigenous peoples will continue unabated.'

KINSHASA - Who are the Congolese mineral divers in the midst of the green transition? They call themselves kazabuleurs. In the late 1980s, Zairean fishermen dived for diamonds, first near Tshikapa and then on the Angolan border during the civil war.

JOHANNESBURG - South Africa, the queer paradise, or at least that is what is said. We know the images of the annual Pride in Johannesburg. As such, South Africa is the only country on the entire African continent in which LGBTQIA+ persons have equal rights, and can also marry. Only: the contrast between the constitution and daily reality is stark.

CAÏRO - With the war in the Gaza Strip, negotiations on a billion-dollar deal between the European Union (EU) and Egypt gained momentum. In exchange for more financial support, the EU wants Egypt to keep its borders tightly guarded. The EU envisions a "golden age" of cooperation with Egypt. 

ROME - NGOs carrying out rescue operations in the Mediterranean have been at odds with the Italian government for years. SOS MEDITERRANNEE claims to perform its duty as mandated by international maritime law. Italy fights back with administrative sanctions.

SOBIBOR - After Auschwitz, Sobibor is the largest Dutch mass grave with more than 34,000 Dutch victims. Starting in 1942, more than 170,000 Jews were gassed here in a year and a half immediately upon arrival. Yet few people know about this death camp. After a successful prisoner uprising in October 1943, the Nazis closed Sobibor, erasing as many traces as possible.

LEUVEN - In the project "Does the Appeltans process bring an end to more than 20 years of slum landlords?" Arne Sonck investigated the power of slum landlords in Leuven. He brings to light how the Leuven landlord Appeltans was able to build a real estate empire by coloring outside the lines, and why the Leuven administration was able to watch this alone for a long time.

DAMASCUS - In No Man's Land, Middle East expert Willem Staes travels across Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. During nine trips between August 2021 and March 2023, he will see for himself how Syrian refugees find themselves in the most hopeless situation since the Syrian revolution in 2011.

ANTWERPEN - Imagine that your grandmother was secretly a heroine. That there was a whole story behind her that she never told. That's what Sofie discovers when she cleans out her late grandmother's apartment.

GITEGA / BELGRADO - 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.

TUNIS - When Tunisians initiated the Arab Spring in 2010, a challenging transition to democracy began. Nearly a decade later, Kais Saied, an independent candidate, came to power. He stealthily implements his political agenda, dissolving parliament, arresting the opposition and targeting the media and electoral commission. Many Tunisians speak of a true coup d'état.

MELILLA - In June 2022, dozens of people were killed when a large group attempted to storm the border fence near the Spanish exclave of Melilla in Morocco. European leaders are particularly keen to stop migrants, and to that end, they are turning to Morocco, among others.

CAÏRO - Those who hoped the 2011 Egyptian revolution would dramatically improve women's lives are being disappointed. More than a decade later, calls for equal rights and opportunities are ringing louder than ever. Social media are once again an ideal sounding board for emancipatory ideas. And the regime? As ever, it reacts defensively. Whoever does not go along with the official discourse on women's rights is gagged.'

CAIRO - This year, Egypt is hosting the international climate summit COP27. An African first of symbolic importance, but international organisations like Amnesty International point to the serious abuses in Egyptian prisons. They see the Egyptian presidency as an attempt to polish the regime's image before the international community.

BRUSSELS - Suddenly Eva finds herself face to face with a portrait of her Congolese great-grandfather François. Retrieved from the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren. In the unfamiliar portrait, Eva recognises traits of herself.

ASSAM - Doorheen de heuvelachtige provincie Assam in India stroomt de Brahamaputa. Deze immense rivier ontspringt in het Himalayagebergte en is bezaaid met zandbanken. Op deze zandbanken - ook wel ‘Chars' genoemd - wonen 2 miljoen mensen. 

BRUSSELS - 'Less police force' is a podcast that wants to make police violence in Belgium visible and unravel it through testimonies and interviews with experts. We want to find out why police violence - also in our country - is so common. This automatically brings us to the question: what are the police for? Are the police the guardian of the law, or rather the armed arm of our social order? Is a world without police better? And in what way can justice be done to the victims of police violence?

TEHERAN - The Islamic Republic regime in Iran has been oppressing its people for more than 40 years. In response to this repression and suffocation, the popular uprising of ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ is a powerful ‘no’.

ORANIA - Until thirty years ago, white Afrikaners dominated South Africa, today they feel like a threatened minority. The monopoly on agricultural land is disappearing, their culture is under pressure and many feel unsafe in the big cities. More and more Afrikaners are turning their backs on the rainbow nation. In Orania, the country's most contested village, they want to preserve their identity.

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.

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 term falls dozens of times every day in thousands of places. Racism seems to be an ineradicable social problem.

BRUSSELS - In the three-part podcast If the roller shutter stays closed, we tell the story of Philippe and Peter. Two regulars at De Harmonie, a social restaurant for elderly local residents in Brussels' North Quarter. During the lockdown, however, the doors remained closed. What does this mean for Philippe and Peter, two Brussels residents from very different backgrounds

ANKARA - One image that will undoubtedly mark 2021 is that of the tens of thousands of desperate Afghans drumming outside the closed gates of Kabul airport to get away. The borders were sealed tight, yet hundreds of thousands of Afghans managed to flee. A number of them reached Turkey in the hope of being able to ask for international protection there. An illusion, as it turns out. After the fall of Kabul, Turkey, with the help of Europe, also sealed its borders and stopped registering Afghan asylum seekers. And the waiting lists for resettlement to Europe are endless, so there is little relief to be expected there either.

BRUSSELS - Overcrowding, striking staff, dilapidated infrastructure... With regularity our prisons are in the news in a way that leaves little to the imagination. What is less well known is that each prison has a Supervisory Committee that watches over the welfare of the inmates. About 450 volunteers, including doctors and lawyers, visit the prisons and report on the state of affairs. Complaints Committees were also established at the end of 2020: they are recognised as administrative tribunals within the prison walls.

BRUSSELS - Journalists at Knack, LeVif and RTBF have joined forces to investigate the peculiar financial management of the non-profit organisation Poverello. They greedily buy real estate that often remains empty. The organisation appears to be very rich, but hardly ever uses its money for working with the poor.