Supported projects

BRUSSELS - The photo report gives an insight into cricket, an underexposed sport in Belgium.

ANTWERPEN/ROTTERDAM - The social damage of air pollution caused by the (petro)chemical sector in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam runs into billions of euros. This is according to an investigation by Apache and Follow The Money based on official figures on emissions and transfer of pollutants from large industrial facilities.

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.

ROTTERDAM - The Port of Rotterdam claims to champion sustainability but is the reality matching its marketing?

BRUSSELS - A good 15 percent of all spending within research and development in Flemish higher education comes from companies. Private companies finance research projects and doctorates and purchase licenses. But the line between close cooperation and conflict of interest between university and company is sometimes wafer-thin.

GEORGETOWN - On behalf of US oil giant ExxonMobil, Belgian company Jan de Nul (together with partners) is building an artificial island off the coast of Guyana, South America.

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?

GITEGA / BELGRADO - The Burundi Balkan Route offered several thousand Burundians a way out of their homeland in crisis in 2022.

BELGIUM - The mythical wolf is back in Belgium. So are the eagle owl and the raven. The seal and the beaver. The tropical tree frog. Even the mysterious lynx. And who knows, soon the iconic brown bear? The list is impressive.

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.

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 - Unknown is unloved, especially when it comes to liberal funerary heritage. Gravestones of freethinkers and other "sinners" have been neglected, forgotten or simply disappeared. And yet, things can be different. Three stories about "dog corners," the neglected memorial of the co-founder of Het Laatste Nieuws and columbaria gnawed by concrete rot illustrate the issue.

LALIBELA - The rock churches of Lalibela in northern Ethiopia are world heritage sites. But during the civil war, the village was occupied by civilian militias of the Tigray Army (TPLF) fighting the government army. The soldiers left Lalibela as a ghost village.

BAGDAD - Climate change is causing an exodus in Iraq of farmers whose land is drying up. They are moving with their water buffaloes or selling their livestock. The government does not know how to deal with climate migration, environmentalists are threatened and even kidnapped.

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.

RIOHACHA - The world is facing a total energy transition, and Colombia, too, is joining the momentum.

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.

AMSTERDAM/BRUSSELS - The Dutch Language Union is unique in the world; nowhere else do two countries cooperate so closely in a policy area. They have been doing so since 1980, when the Netherlands and Belgium concluded the Language Union Treaty. In it they solemnly declared their joint commitment to spread the Dutch language throughout the world.

BRUSSELS – ‘Once upon a time there was a man...’ Thus begins the story I was told as a little girl. In the podcast ‘Monsters don’t exist’ I revisit that story together with my contemporaries who grew up in 1990s turbulent Belgium, just like me. While we were busy with homework and playing in the streets, unsettling images and news reports seeped into our young lives and reshaped our understanding of the world forever.

REYKJAVIK - "No one will end up on the streets," Thorir Hall says decidedly. He works for the Red Cross. "In Iceland, sleeping on the streets is not an option."

BRUSSELS - The flip side of pharmaceutical companies' staggering profit figures is that the marketing for their products is incredibly important. Dutch research shows that pharma even spends twice as much money on this than on the development of new drugs. In this study we examine to what extent and in what way health information in the professional media is influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.

SCHIPHOL - In Belgium and the Netherlands, Mexican laborers have raised a new branch of the drug industry: crystal meth. Arthur Debruyne portrays all those involved. 'Buying gloves? Just tell those mexi to work'.

BRUSSELS - You never wear one third of the clothes in your wardrobe. Another third you rarely ever put on. You have not touched nine out of ten outfits for a whole year. You throw away more clothes than any other European. And yet you keep buying new clothes. Because you feel that you need them. Because every morning you wake up and think you have nothing to wear.

KIEV - What does war do to people? Helena Cazaerck, philosopher, journalist and musician, travels to Kiev to find out. She wants to sketch not only the suffering but also the absurdity and irrationality.

BRUSSELS - Experienced staff are being fired, volunteers are dropping out and losses are piling up. Meanwhile, external consultants earn up to €20,000 a month. What is going on at Action Damien?

COPENHAGEN - By 2050, the earth will have 10 billion inhabitants. At the same time, the area of available agricultural land per person is shrinking. As climate disrupts, classical farming systems are colliding with their limits.