Supported projects

ANTWERP / ROTTERDAM - The ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam are the main European gateway for cocaine. Publicly, the Netherlands and Belgium proclaim their united commitment to breaking the backbone of the drug trade. But behind the scenes, differences in political culture are at play, and resentment and gloom reign.

AFRICA - While hatred and fear is sown in Europe about " floating negroes" and "repopulation," the African side of the immigration debate remains underexposed.

BRUSSELS - In the European Parliament, Vlaams Belang has a very different narrative than the social image the party wants to project in Flanders. Even in Flanders, by the way, this social narrative should be taken with a grain of salt.

BRUSSELS - Journalist and writer Catherine Vuylsteke chronicled the life stories of Mar Maremoto, Ann Telnaes, Rachita Taneja, Doaa El-Adl, Victoria Lomasko and Amany Al-Ali, six women cartoonists from Mexico, the U.S., India, Egypt, Russia and Syria to whom the documentary series Draw for Change, recently awarded at Cannes, is dedicated.

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.

UKRAINE - Is there room for healing and recovery in the midst of wartime? With that question, photographer Emiel Petrovitch and writer Johannes Decat traveled to Ukraine. Their answers are contained in a series of articles.

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

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.

BELFAST - Northern Ireland this week celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. The 1998 peace brought an end to 30 years of civil war between Protestants and Catholics, but unrest seems to have returned in recent years. Northern Ireland politics has been tumbling into one crisis after another since Brexit.

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.

BRUSSELS - These women weren’t leading  the same battles, walking in the same streets or speaking in the same forums. Yet they were all victims of the same crime:  political feminicide.

KINSHASA - Kris Berwouts, with the support of the Pascal Decroos Fund, is investigating the strange circumstances in which the transfer of power between Joseph Kabila and Felix Tshisekedi took place, not only between the elections of 30 December 2018 and Tshisekedi's inauguration on 24 January 2019, but also afterwards.

BEIRUT - More and more Lebanese are leaving - they see no future in the country that is virtually bankrupt. The situation has deteriorated further: the Lebanese lira continues to depreciate; access to electricity and water is increasingly limited. Soon, even telephone and internet services may fall if the government does not provide the state-owned company with diesel for its generators.

SARAJEVO - Thirty years after the start of the civil war, Bosnia and Herzegovina is once again in troubled waters. The fragile balance between Bosniaks, Serbs and Croat Bosnians risks being disrupted by political instability.

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.

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 there is more going on than a religious conflict.

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.

MADRID - In 2010, VRT correspondent Sven Tuytens moved from Brussels to Madrid. Based on his experiences, he tries to lay bare a piece of Spain's soul.

GHENT - In the autumn of 2020, in the midst of a severe lockdown, dozens of Ghent-based organisations joined forces to map out homelessness and precarious housing situations.

BUJUMBURA - After sixty years, Ludo De Witte opens up about a murder that set Burundi on the road to internal division, ethnic tension and mass killings.

BEIRUT - The report 'Draining the well of young dreams' portrays these young adults alongside urban landscapes that reflect the current situation in Beirut.

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, Geznakh, he decides to make this important journey

HASSELT - Hunting of wild boar in Flanders increases exponentially. Despite restrictive measures because of the coronavirus, 2,196 wild boars were shot in 2020. More than twice as many as in 2016. Many hunters have been using modern, prohibited hunting tools such as night vision goggles in recent years. "If there is control, I can quickly shake it off my rifle," he says.

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.

BELGRADE - Writer and historian Irene van der Linde and documentary photographer Nicole Segers travel in the footsteps of the British writer Rebecca West through former Yugoslavia and Albania. With West's magnum opus Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) in their hands, they go in search of the meaning of the new borders in the Balkans.

BEIRUT - On 17 October 2019, a revolution broke out in Lebanon that is still raging among the people. The - young, secular - population is trying to break free, while the divided sectarian power apparatus is digging deeper. The ongoing Lebanese popular protests resulted in the largest national protest since the civil war (75-90). All Lebanese, regardless of their frame of reference within the melting pot of cultures, unite under one banner against the corrupt commanders

KINSHASA - The research by Jeroen Janssen, awarded graphic novelist, and journalist Hilde Baele on Mzee Jérôme Sebasoni, who became Che Guevara's guide as a young Inyenzi rebel, took no less than 12 years.

ANTWERP - He was one of the most important investigative journalists in Belgium. He published revelations about the murder of the leader of the socialist party André Cools, the Gang of Nivelles, the arms trade and the extreme right. He loved the idea that those in power would have been safer without him and he had a phenomenal archive. He died young from Alzheimer's.

TEHERAN - It is now more than a year since the US unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear agreement with Iran. Since then, the Iranian economy has suffered the stiff sanctions, while unemployment and poverty in the country are rising. Whatever the Americans want to achieve with this, their policy doesn't only create losers, but also winners.

IMIDER - Imider is a very small community, but it has been put on the map by a world record. In the southern Moroccan Atlas Mountains, under a colourful Berber flag, the world's longest sit-in protest is ongoing.