Supported projects

ARBIL - With Little Survivors Lotte Knaepen and Lisa Matthys made a report in Kurdistan (Northern Iraq). The story is about the Yazidis, a people who were persecuted by ISIS. Many Yazidi children became victims of human trafficking, were separated from their families, used as slaves or trained as child soldiers in Raqqa. In this documentary, the makers follow four little survivors who have suffered trauma in various ways. But the focus is on their resilience, courage and creativity.

GAZA - As early as eight years ago, the UN warned that the Gaza Strip was at risk of becoming unlivable by 2020. At the beginning of that year, De Morgen journalist Martijn Lauwens went to see what that means. He travelled around the isolated Palestinian enclave for a week and asked the people there how they live, how they see the future and what they dream of. 

YEREVAN - Kubra was born and raised in Belgium. However, her family is Turkish, at least, that's what they thought, because she was brought up as a Belgian Turk: with Turkish customs and the Islamic faith. Internal doubts lead her to have a DNA test taken in 2017 to see if she actually has Turkish roots. The test showed that she is not Turkish but Armenian. 

MYANMAR - The Karen People are an ethnic minority of eastern and southern Burma (Myanmar). Many Karen people live in north-western Thailand as refugees from the decades-long Karen insurgency and Burmese government oppression. 

TANGIER - Hirak protests broke out in northern Morocco three years ago. Following the terrible death of a fish seller, the Riffines were crying out for good education, health care, work, fair justice and the fight against corruption. But the regime hit hard, resulting in hundreds of arrests. The leaders of the non-violent Hirak movement were sentenced to twenty years in prison.

BOGOTA - Belgium is a banana republic, as far as trade is concerned. There are only three countries in the world that import more bananas than we do: the United States, Russia and China. But we export 87 percent, or 1.17 tons, of those bananas. Most bananas come from Colombia. 

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 that." 

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, but also to eradicate the Yazidi, a community with its own religion and an ancient culture. Fate awaited residents who were locked down by IS. The men were killed; women and girls sold as slaves and boys were put in IS training camps.

AR-RAQQAH - "Bomb after bomb after bomb." Dima is peeling potatoes in the kitchen when rockets are fired at her house. She loses a leg and two fingers. There are 7 dead. All citizens.

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 child, but also her freedom. Under pressure from, among others, the Catholic Church, El Salvador has one of the strictest abortion laws in the world.

BELGIUM - Flanders and the Netherlands have a long tradition of silence about the disgraceful collaboration with the German occupiers during the Second World War. Twin brothers Hein and Toon Van den Brempt are determined to break that silence.

KAMPALA - Uganda is known as 'the best country in the world for refugees'. Everyone who arrives gets a piece of land and material to build a house.

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? 

RAMALLAH - Palestinians better think twice before they marry. Many couples can't live together because their partner has another identity card.

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 ISIS fighters, because whoever is killed by a woman wouldn't go to heaven. The fact that these warriors generally looked good on camera attracted the attention of Australian and British news channels, such as the BBC.

PALESTINE/COLOMBIA/IRAQ - In the three-part documentary series Amazons, Phara de Aguirre goes in search of women who take up arms. She investigates why the women who made the radical choice, what they hope to achieve and what the consequences are, for themselves and for their environment.

MYTILINI - In October 2017 cartoonists Judith Vanistendael, Aimée de Jongh and Mei-Li Nieuwland visited the refugee camps of Moria and Kara Tepe on Lesvos.

MADRID - The unknown battle of young women from Belgium and the Netherlands against Franco and Hitler.

RAMALLAH - The fact that ordinary Palestinians have suffered the effects of the Israeli occupation for over fifty years is something that everyone knows. This is shown by the countless articles and reports that reach the public every day. But how the Palestinian population also suffers from the autocratic leadership of its own politicians and administrators and their crippling internal quarrels is less known.

KAMPALA - Uganda is known as one of the world's worst countries to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). LGBT people risk cell for fourteen years and are victims of violence and discrimination. Ugandan church leaders call to lynch them, political leaders use them as lightning rods for the real problems.

CHORQISLOQ - A village in a remote region in Tajikistan, is under strict observation of local police, security services and other agencies. 69 inhabitants have left for Syria in the past three years. Fear seems to reign among village residents and relatives of IS fighters are closely monitored by the security services. ''Nobody knows how they left, not even their own family members'' whispers a primary school teacher. Her colleague adds: "We can not talk about them".

DONETSK / ODESSA - At the beginning of this month the conflict in Ukraine came back in the news. With the support of the Pascal Decroos Fund, MO * journalist Pieter Stockmans and photographer Jürgen Augusteyns went to both sides of the front line.

TRIPOLI - The dream of the Arab Spring has splattered. Since the outbreak of popular uprisings in 2011, things have gone from bad to worse in the region. Is the Arab world simply not ready for democracy, or is there more to it?

KAKUMA - How do you build a home in a place called nowhere? Filmmaker Lieven Corthouts decided to stay in one of the harshest places on earth and make this camp his home.

KAKUMA - In a remote corner of the sparsely populated northwest of Kenya, the Kakuma Refugee Camp was founded in 1991. The persistent instability in the region caused a society with increasingly urban characteristics to arise.

KIEV - The Belgian Koen Carlier has a mission: he wants to bring all Jews in the world to Israel. With the support of Christians for Israel, he travels through Ukraine to help Jews return to Israel. Because only then will the Messiah come, says Koen ...

KIGALI – Twenty years ago, on 7 April 1994, the Rwandan genocide began. The cartoonist Jeroen Janssen was in the country at the time. After publishing his first comic book about the genocide in 1997, the fact-based fictional story Muzungu, he had wanted to create a more in-depth book. Because there is more to the story.

SOECHOEMI/TSHKINVALI - In view of the tensions between Russia and the West, the importance of the so-called "frozen conflicts" in the turbulent Caucasus is increasing. How is daily life in the rebellious Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which have been de facto independent since the collapse of the Soviet Union? 

JUAREZ - "How much you own, that's how much you're worth. That's how it works here. For us poor people, there's no justice." Susana's daughter Lupita went into town 6 years ago to buy shoes. She never came back. There are thousands of Lupitas in Juárez, Mexico. Lynn Cornelis and Sofie Meelberghs want to know who's behind the wave of kidnappings and murders.

KOBANI - War is not only waged with weapons but also through conflicting ideologies given to children in wartime education. Journalist Pieter Stockmans went to Syria and Turkey and found a struggle for land and values.