Supported projects

JERUSALEM / RAMALLAH - The war in Gaza has been going on for more than a year. Ethnic cleansing is taking place not only there, but also in the West Bank. It did not start after October 7, but has been going on for decades, stresses Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, among others. 

GOMA - After 25 years of blue helmets' presence in eastern Congo, 2024 was supposed to be the year of departure. But as the UN peacekeeping mission deploys the retreat, M23 rebels keep advancing. 

BAGDAD - Ten years ago, ISIS began its reign of terror in Iraq by invading Mosul. Many people were killed in the process. Minorities such as the Yazidis and Christians have received a lot of attention in this regard. Less well known is the plight of the Sunnis, the largest group, who lived under ISIS occupation and were oppressed and killed. They were subsequently lumped together with the radicals by many.

MEXICO-CITY - Like in India or the United States, Mexicans will elect a new head of state in 2024. That must spend the next six years dealing with the dubious legacy of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. 'Whoever comes to power, the oppression of indigenous peoples will continue unabated.'

KIEV - In January 2024, Dutch investigative journalist Linda van der Pol and Belgian photographer Gena Kagermanov traveled to Ukraine to investigate the impact of the Russian invasion on the Ukrainian cultural sector in several cities.

BRUSSELS - Two young people are growing up in a world that is destroying itself. They each seek their own path and test how far they are willing to go in their actions.

JEREVAN - For Armenians, the pomegranate symbolises the invincibility of the Armenian spirit. Pomegranates begin to ripen in September. Their skin dries up while the flesh becomes moist.

YANGAMBI - In the middle of Congo's tropical rainforest lies Yangambi, a nature reserve where scientists study climate change. To do so, they need an intact piece of forest. But that causes tensions with the local inhabitants, because they use the forest to survive.

KIEV - Foreign journalists report plenty about the war in Ukraine, and that is dangerous enough. But they're helped by local journalists, "fixers," and they can't just avoid the situation in their country. What does that nonstop work do to these people?

NINOVE - "Marginal triangle," "wing-west for the extreme right," "cultural breakdown strip against the language border. For those who don't live there, it's easy to brush off the Dender region. But how do the residents themselves actually see it?

LOW COUNTRIES - How the Netherlands and Belgium argue over the Iron Rhine

ANTWERPEN - Imagine that your grandmother was secretly a heroine. That there was a whole story behind her that she never told. That's what Sofie discovers when she cleans out her late grandmother's apartment.

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.

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.

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.

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 – A huge amount of art was stolen during World War II. The Nazis looted art from occupied countries and brought it to Germany, where they established ambitious collections. The story of what happened to Belgian art has yet to be told. How did paintings by Memling, Van der Weyden, Bruegel, Jordaens and Cranach leave the country so easily? The Nazis looted homes, stole art and forced owners to sell, spending millions of Reichsmarks in the process.

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.

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.

MARIUPOL - The Sea of ​​Azov is the shallowest sea in the world. The entire region around the sea has been a battleground for centuries. Russia and Ukraine share control over the Sea of ​​Azov. In 2003, both countries reached an agreement about 'free navigation' for all.

STEPANAKERT - Nearly 30 years after Nagorno-Karabakh's declaration of independence, the region's simmering conflicts have flared up again. Nagorno-Karabakh is a country that does not officially exist. Still, it is fought over hard. Journalists Roel Nollet and Marijn Sillis travel to the Southern Caucasus, an ancient crossroads of cultures where the unrecognized states are a stone's throw from each other. Through the rugged Armenian mountains, they travel hundreds of kilometers along the border with Azerbaijan to record the stories of the people at the foot of the Caucasus.

MOSUL - Many residents of Mosul, Iraq's second city, view the power seized by Shiite militias in the city as a new occupation. Even if the terror group ISIS could be chased away militarily, they do not know how they will ever get rid of the militias that have corruptly infiltrated every aspect of life.

GHENT - WHY WE FIGHT? is a cinematographic film that tries to understand the violence around us, but also in ourselves, in order to better cope with today's world.

SANAA - Yemen already suffered from a high rate of birth defects and infant mortality before the war, due in part to intrafamily marriages and lack of family planning, but the hospitals we visited in three different provinces are adamant that there has been an unprecedented increase since the war. 

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.

AUSTIN - Louise Van Assche is a documentary filmmaker who lives and works in Austin, Texas. She was born and raised in Belgium and has Congolese roots. A year ago she moved to Austin, the capital of Texas. There she ended up in the middle of the Black Lives Matter protests. It touched her personally and she decided to take to the streets to make a report.

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

CABO DELGADO - There are diamonds, gold and a gigantic gas bubble in the ground, but that doesn't help the inhabitants of Cabo Delgado, Mozambique. The government abandons them and the army can't protect them from violence. The militant Islamist group Al-Shabab manages more and more to recruit the impoverished population with an ill-founded, religious story. MO* went to the heart of the affected province.