KINSHASA - White Elephant is a documentary about the Central Post-Office and its employees in Kinshasa, DR Congo. 

Several ten thousands of illegal Brasilians work on Belgian construction sites. They are also known as the ‘new Poles’. Journalists Nico Schoofs and Filip Michiels of Vacature Magazine lay bare the shady business behind the exploitation of those cheap labourers.

Xinjiang is a province of China, with the statute of ‘Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’ under control of the central Chinese government. It is very Chinese and at the same time it seems not Chinese at all. Xinjiang borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. It has a climate that is barely appropriate for human life with temperatures of minus 30 to plus 48, with strong dessert winds that regularly cover everything in dust and sand. It is one of the areas on earth furthest away from the sea.

(ABIDJAN) - More than eight years into the Ivorian conflict and on the eve of the presidential elections which are meant to signal the end of violence, Abidjan's former militias are still very much a tangible presence in the southern part of the country. Beyond occassionaly voicing their discontent over the unsettled 1000-dollar demobilisation fee, ex-militia members are active in ways that were difficult to predict when they first emerged in the early days of the conflict. In view of the upcoming elect ions it is important to assess the militias' involvement in politics and vice-versa. 'Guantánamo', the last remaining barracks of the GPP militia, is the place from where some of these developments can be observed.

UYUNI - Uyuni is a backward region in the South of Bolivia. Bult the salt lake of Uyuni is rich with lithium, the commodity for the production of batteries, soon also for batteries for electrical vehicles. For this raw material a game of chess is being played between some multinational companies, the people of Uyuni and Bolivia's government.

BAHI -- NGOs, city administrations and publishers worldwide switch to FSC-certified paper. Ordinary consumers can buy copy and printing paper as well as paper towels and even wallpaper bearing the tree logo. But is the paper's green image justified? An-Katrien Lecluyse and Leo Broers investigated the case in the eucalyptus plantations of the Brazilian state Bahia.

ISLAMABAD -- The American president Obama described a part of Pakistan as ‘the most dangerous place on earth’. The country is dangerous in two ways: dangerous to itself, as few places yield as many bomb attacks and victims, but also dangerous to the rest of the world, as the bombings are exported and Pakistan is a nuclear power, with ‘Islamic’ bombs that are perhaps not sufficiently secured.

SREBRENICA - 15 years after the war in Bosnia over 7000 refugees still live in ‘temporary’ refugee camps in the heart of Europe. The Bosnians themselves want to forget about them, the NGO’s have left the country, moved on to new conflict zones. But the people are still there. Just like their children, who were born in these camps. They are a new generation of war victims, struggling not only with the trauma of their parents, but also with a lack of education and severe poverty. Domestic violence, abuse, alcoholism and addiction are common practise in these settlements. A young generation is going to waste, while politicians do everything to keep the conflict between etnical Bosniacs, Serbs and Croats alive for their personal and electoral benefits. Nationalist rethorics rule, no one is interested in a common future or reconciliation. 

 In July 2009, the American magazine Foreign Policy published its annual list of failed nation-states. The Democratic Republic of Congo occupied fifth place, after notoriously dysfunctional states like Somalia, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Chad, and ahead of war-torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. This performance was particularly depressing, given the high hopes that surrounded the presidential election of 2006, the first democratic ballot since the country gained independence in 1960. In fact, a few years into the new administration, the country seems to be doing even worse, despite its immense natural resources.

More then a hundred years after the publication of Joseph Conrads’ book ’The Heart of Darkness”. Marc Hoogsteyns checks if the situation in Congo has changed. Despite all the trouble the author remarks that there is still hope for this country.

BRUSSELS — Due to the banking crisis the Belgian governement had to bail out 4 major financial institutions in 2008 and 2009 to prevent them from bankrupcy. Fortis, KBC, Dexia and Ethias initially received more than 20 billion of tax payers' money which they will have to reimburse eventually. But which role does the government play in the meantime now that it acquired seats as an important stakeholder in the governing boards of these banks?

Ask any average Belgian, or any European for that matter, to name three words he associates with sub-Saharan Africa. The odds are big he will come up with for instance ‘war’, ‘hunger’ and ‘rape’.

With financial support from the Fonds Pascal Decroos, Nick Meynen followed carbon credit money flowing from Belgium to India, where he discovered a desert full of mirages. Part from the fraud and abuse, he also noticed the difference in approach between Flanders and Belgium, the buyers of carbon credits.

A year ago the Belgian government bought 2 million tonnes of CO2 permits from Hungary. This 26 million euros investment aims to fulfill the country’s commitment under the Kyoto Protocol: Decreasing their emissions 7.5 percent by 2012 compared to 1990 levels. Under the terms of the deal, Hungary had to invest the proceeds in the Green Investment Scheme (GIS), an investment vehicle for energy efficiency and renewable energy. Belgium is one of the first countries to experiment with this mechanism. Hence, the results of this deal are decisive for an evaluation at the Summit in Copenhagen.

Last year, Dubai emerged as the most important non-European destination for Belgian business travellers, thanks to its strategic location, the booming real estate market and an especially high concentration of stinking rich people. Journalist Filip Michiels and photographer Isabel Pousset travelled to the small emirate on behalf of Vacature Magazine and discovered that Dubai has a whole lot more to offer to the exhausted business traveller: prostitutes. In every colour, size and nationality, they populate the bars and nightclubs of dozens of luxury hotels. In the thousands. Read more...

 Everyone has an opinion about Cuba, but in 'Cuba after Castro' Lode Delputte shows what is really at stake. Cuba's future is inextricably linked to its self-proclaimed glorious past. No reasonable person would doubt that Fidel Castro's time is long gone. Even the political elite in Havana have come to understand that today's revolution is but a glimpse of what it used to be.

Asbestos is the perfect model of a substance mined, industrially exploited and widely marketed as a miracle material without proper research into its long-term effects on health. Indeed, it went on being promoted long after it was recognised as dangerous. 

After the genocide of 1994, the Rwandan government temporarily suspended history from the school curriculum. The characters in After Years of Walking - children, teachers, genocide killers, students and historians - all find themselves in an uncertain zone between the old history and a new one.
The filmmaker found a historical film made in 1959 by Belgian missionaries. She took this film back to Rwanda in 2002 as an entry point into Rwanda's search for history.