Supported projects

COPENHAGEN - Danish police are investigating the ins and outs of the porn cinema shop ‘Nonstop Bio Cinerotic, which rents out rooms to Nigerian sex slaves in Copenhagen's red light district. One of the directors of the sex cinema shop was until very recently - in a personal capacity - Belgian knight Guy Paquot, top executive of the Belgian listed holding compagny Compagnie du Bois Sauvage nv.

LUSAKA - Elections will be held in Zambia on 28 September 2006. President Mwanawasa hopes that voters will reward his efforts to combat corruption, but the likelihood of this is low. This is because Mwanawasa himself appears to have anything but clean hands. Meanwhile, Zambia and the rest of the world are still far from resolving the enormous looting network of former president Frederick Chiluba.

BRUSSELS/TARGIA - 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.

KUKËS - The Kukes Prefecture, located in north-eastern Albania near the border with Kosovo, is one of the poorest regions in the country. It has a population of almost 120,000, 75% of whom live in rural areas.

KIGALI - Emma Dardenne, a widow living alone in Brussels (Belgium), was born in Rwanda in 1908 from a Rwandan mother and captain Heinrich von Bethe, a German officer on post in the German colony at that time. Despite the age of 95 and accompanied by her daughter Paulette and her grandson Manu she decides to revisit Rwanda to finally give them clear proof of her childhood stories.

NEW DELHI - Grensloos India (India without frontiers) is a collection of critical travel essays with political depth. The book is a combination of travelogue, reflection and reportage on various facets of modern India: globalisation, the computer industry, religion and politics, poverty and exclusion, political extremism, tourism and the rise of the Indian middle class.

SURAT - Once upon a time, Antwerp was the world's centre for diamond trading and cutting. As of 2005, the trade is still present, but Antwerp's renowned diamond industry is in decline. In an increasingly globalised world, diamond processing here has become too labour-intensive and expensive.

BEIJING - China has been on a spectacular economic rise for several years. It threatens to overtake Europe and the US as a global power. Is it a bubble that is about to burst, or should the West really fear the "yellow peril"? Who are China's modern-day gold-diggers, and are Chinese workers being exploited?

TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ - In January 2004, it will be ten years since the Zapatista Army of Liberation (EZLN) took up arms in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The rebels set themselves an unlikely mission: to declare war on neoliberalism.

KIGALI - 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.

BRUSSELS - Europe is expanding. May 2004 will be the moment of truth. Europe will then extend beyond the tundra of Finland, the sovkhozes and kolkhozes of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the billboard-cluttered landscape of Poland, the gypsy settlements of Slovakia and the nationalism-ridden countryside of Hungary. In another three years, poverty-stricken Romania and Bulgaria will join the European Union.

ZAVENTEM - Steven Decraene, Peter Denruyter and Geert Sciot are three journalists who have delved into the complex and tragic Sabena case. Sabena was the first national airline in Europe to disappear. How did this happen to the country's flying monument?

OUAGADOUGOU - When freelance photographer Karl Deckers realised he had not received any Annual Progress Reports about his foster child anymore for the years 1999 and 2000, he looked through the reports from 1992 to 1998. To his surprise, each year's report seemed to be more or less a copy of that of the year before. Deckers decided to go and have a look at the situation himself.

JERUSALEM - Needless to say, the 'new intifada' in Israel/Palestine is having a major international impact. On the one hand, it is one of the longest-running and most mediatised conflicts of the post-war era; on the other hand, the coverage seems to be mostly one-sided. By this, Abicht means that the Israeli-American point of view receives much more attention than the Palestinian one, but also that the focus tends to be on external events and visible actions, while the underlying emotions and interests require much more attention.

SALVADOR DA BAIA - The popularity of world music has been on the rise in recent years. But often the countries of origin of the musicians in question are only in the news because of wars, disasters or economic crises. The story behind the music, the importance of it in society as catalyst for messages of development or warnings against AIDS, is never told.

PRETORIA - David Van Reybrouck investigates whether and to what extent Maurice Maeterlinck, so far the only Belgian Nobel laureate in literature, committed plagiarism when writing 'La Vie des Termites' (1926).

BUKAVU - Finding out who they are is the aim of this documentary project. News reports suggest that genuine Mayi-Mayi militias are operating. In reality, however, the Mayi-Mayi are said to be nothing more than a hard core of poorly armed civilians. Nevertheless, they would make life extremely difficult for the occupying forces.

KAMPALA - Africa specialist Els De Temmerman is the first person to receive support from the fund. In her book The Girls of Aboke, she talks about the fate of two girls who were used as child soldiers by rebels in their fight with the government army in northern Uganda. The girls, like thousands of their peers, have to kill other children and torture the population.

GHENT - Our region has everything it needs to be a world leader in green chemistry. At least, that is what the government and industry unanimously claim. We put this to the test in North Sea Port, the binational port that says it is fully committed to a circular future. Will the chemical giants along the Ghent-Terneuzen canal lead us to the promised land of clean and circular chemistry?