ANTWERP - In the summer of 2022, 174 Filipino, Turkish and Bangladeshi workers were discovered to be working illegally at Antwerp port in Belgium. It was the biggest number of modern slaves discovered in the country. Newspapers called it an ‘unprecedented case.’ This story looks at the ordeal of exploited workers, the routes of trafficking between Asia into Belgium which many have fallen victim to. 

GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN - The Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain, is home to three of the five glaciers within the country. At least it was.

ROTTERDAM/ANTWERP - What is the environmental and health impact of air pollution caused by the (petro)chemical industry in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam?

EU - Forced sterilisation of women with disabilities is criminalised in only nine EU countries. This investigation in Spain, France, Hungary and Sweden proves that the eugenics-based practice is still going on in Europe at a time when the European Parliament is debating its outlawing.  

MADRID - Amazon boasts about having 15 photovoltaic solar plants in Spain to supply energy to its workplaces.

BRUSSELS - A team of reporters from the Thomson Reuters Foundation and Irish Times have investigated the impact of the first-ever application of the Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) by the EU to Ukrainian refugees.

KYIV - "Spektr.Press" presents a Project 'Private War', which is combined of a series of publications about foreigners who decided to participate in the military conflict in Ukraine.

KYIV - Ukraine's war against Russia strengthens Ukrainian national identity and reduces the influence of Russian language and culture in society.

AMSTERDAM - There is an invisible workforce keeping homes in the Netherlands spotless. Filipino cleaners run about Dutch cities each day, their packs filled with dozens of jingling keys. They are part of a community of thousands of undocumented migrants who clean homes in the Netherlands. They're indispensable but kept unseen.

TOUVRE (IVORY COAST) - There is an increased demand for minerals such as cobalt, nickel and lithium. These minerals are used to make electronic devices such as laptops, smartphones and electric vehicles - technologies which are deemed essential to the 'green transition'. However, the increase in demand has led to new pressures for communities around the world that live alongside these minerals.

GOUDA/VENICE - Sinking Cities is a long-term multimedia project exploring what it means to live in sinking cities.

With the EU set to boost organic farmland, how can it maintain consumer confidence in an agricultural sector tainted by fraud? 

AMSTERDAM - Shell knows the ways to the highest circles as well as the shortcuts through the political swamps. The oil and gas giant operates in 70 countries. Most are not democratic constitutional states. Shell - until recently Royal Dutch Shell - has to deal daily with weak or autocratic governments, corruption, unrest, war and terrorism. How does it navigate through these?

ISTANBUL/BELGRADE - This investigation uncovers that young Turkish citizens are increasingly using the Balkan route as a transit point to enter the EU illegally. The growing trend is due to crumbling purchasing power, high unemployment, and tense political environment in the country.

EUROPE - Schools are crucial integration hubs. This investigation is about teaching migrant students in the schools of Europe.

BUDAPEST - In our articles, we were able to map the institutional background of how the sexual violence committed against a 15-year-old former foster child was covered up at a church-run institution.

As European citizens, we are told to separate our household waste, and many of us do dutifully. The ketchup bottle you rinsed and threw in the right bin at home might disappear from your life with the local waste truck.

ACCRA - This investigation puts the spotlight on the use of banned pesticides from Europe in rubber farms in Ghana and other regions across the world, while European development banks, the main funder of such projects turn a blind eye to the environmental, health and safety concerns.

ERBIL/ISTANBUL/ATHENS - The complexity and dangers along migration routes to Europe —including the risk of being swindled by traffickers or robbed by security forces—, have increased the role of an informal banking system that works through “hawala”, a traditional money transfer system based on interpersonal trust

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. 

BASRA - In Iraq, one of the world’s driest and poorest countries, Western oil companies are exacerbating water shortages as they make record profits exporting alternatives to Russian oil in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

SARAJEVO - Around half of Bosnia-Herzegovina is covered by forests and wood is one of the Balkan country’s most valuable natural resources. But instead of developing the nation, some politicians and private companies enrich themselves with the profits of the ‘green gold’. Forests are cut down for private interests and governments and companies in Western-Europe close their eyes to gain cheap wood. 

TUZLA - According to studies, the 18 coal power plants in the Western Balkans (WB) are responsible for more pollution than the 221 coal power plants still active in the European Union.

MINSK - Belarusian goods are attacking Europe despite the bans of Brussels.

KYIV - Surrogacy is a growing business worldwide. 

BARCELONA/COTTBUS/ASSEN - Climate terrorism, rebellion, radicalization: increasingly violent words are being thrown around in the debate on climate activism.

YEREVAN - Since 2017, nearly 100 Armenian citizens have served as proxy directors for a network of companies that have been used by prominent Eastern European oligarchs to move millions of dollars, shift assets from shuttered banks abroad, and pay for lobbying services in the United States.

KIGALI - A research in Rwanda shows that "CO2 compensation projects" are often unverifiable, the ecological added value is more than questionable, and climate (in)justice is not just a political fighting term, but a life-threatening reality in East Africa.

Riga, Latvia - From Trams through Pharmaceuticals to Renewable Energy: Czech millionaire Tomáš Krsek is a well-known investor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist with a known fortune of €436 million (2021). 

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.

CAIRO/TUNIS - Despite sanctions on the late Arab dictators Hosni Mubarak and Zine el-Abdine Ben Ali, their clans and allies still own French property worth millions, casting doubts on the effectiveness of these sanctions. Recovering Egypt’s and Tunisia’s stolen wealth remains elusive.

FOS-SUR-MER - The world’s steel leader ArcelorMittal has exceeded several pollution limits authorized by European, Italian and French law for a decade. Meanwhile, the multinationale headquartered in Luxembourg has received billions euros of public funds and indirect subsidies.

LAZIO - The team has been investigating The Green Gold of Italy, or Kiwi Revolution as it is known locally, since April 2022. The Lazio region of Italy has become the world's largest producer of kiwis in the past years. But glitter doesn't always mean gold.

BRUSSEL - 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.

PRIKRO The presence of SIAT, a Belgian company specialised in palm oil and rubber production, in Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria, comes with a significant socio-economic and environmental cost for the local communities. With the support of the national governments, the company is causing social division, food scarcity and restlessness. The locals are fighting back, reclaiming their lands both at the national and international levels.

EUROPE - More than 17.000 sites all over Europe are contaminated by the “forever chemical” PFAS, an exclusive, monthslong investigation from 18 European newsrooms shows. The investigation “The Forever Pollution Project” reveals an additional 22.000 presumptive contamination sites due to current or past industrial activity. The contamination revealed by this project spreads all over Europe.

KERKENNAH ISLANDS - In Tunisia, artisanal fishers are facing depleted fish stocks as a result of illegal bottom trawling.

KHARKIV/TBILISI - Journalists in Ukraine and Georgia investigated the issue of the construction of large cities and found corruption points and schemes used by officials and developers. 

TBILISI - The project investigates the patterns of forming Russian propaganda messages and their dissemination in Georgian and Moldovan churches based on human sources and stories.

GUINEA/SERBIA/THE NETHERLANDS - According to Europol, the smuggling of songbirds and other tropical birds to the European Union (EU) has skyrocketed in recent years, especially along the Balkans trafficking route.

ACCRA - ABUJA - The Dark Side of European Used Cars and Parts Trade in West Africa (Ghana and Nigeria)

United Kingdom - With islands across Europe having experienced years of population decline, many now face an uncertain future.

Riga, Latvia - Belarusian businessman Aliaksandr Shakutsin (Aleksandr Shakutin) was sanctioned two years ago for benefiting from and supporting the regime of Aliaksandr Lukashenka.

OYO - The Danish government's Danida Market Development Partnerships (DMDP) disbursed DKK 9 million to its Canadian partner Mennonite Economic Development Association (MEDA) in 2019 for a 4-year project to support Nigerian women shea collectors, but the project was terminated before the predetermined four years. The team looked into the project's effects and the reasons behind its abrupt termination in 2020.

KENYA/CAMEROON - An investigation has established that Chemical Pesticides that are already banned within European Union markets are still used in Kenya and Cameroon Markets.

ROME - An investigation for Byline Times by the Citizens and il Fatto Quotidiano can exclusively reveal how a Catholic charity is being run by a former National Front member who has promoted a number of conspiracy theories and fundraised for a far-right Italian politician who was arrested and imprisoned for his part in violence which erupted at anti-Green Pass protests in 2021.

PALERMO – The Italian market for sushi has surged over the last decade and is now one of its most popular foreign cuisines. Sicily – which like many regions of Italy is fiercely proud of its regional food culture – has nevertheless seen a recent food revolution with sushi restaurants and poke bowl joints appearing across its cities, helped along by the lockdown surge in delivery culture, and the popularity of apps such as Glovo, UberEats and Deliveroo. 

LONDON - A highly-produced three-part, narrative podcast, it follows the dirty trail of British waste from dustbins in England and exposes a British system creaking under the weight of hundreds of millions of tonnes of waste - with illegal dumping happening with impunity both at home and abroad. 

DUBLIN - Recruited to Ireland with the promise of good wages, fishers from the Philippines - often in debt after paying illegal recruitment fees - travel across the world to provide better opportunities for themselves and their families. But a work permission scheme, introduced following exposure of trafficking and exploitation of undocumented workers in the sector, has now become a vehicle to exploit the same workers it was introduced to protect, according to workers' advocates. 

Two articles, one story - noise pollution in Western Balkans. Although constantly underestimated, this pollution is disturbing citizens of the region’s capitals on a daily basis. Unfortunately, noise has become a habit, which is precisely what should not happen.

BRATISLAVA - A couple from Slovakia imported hundreds of frogs from Central America to the EU, completely legally. However, the woman was later apprehended in Germany, where police seized over 100 frogs from her. Some of them of the kind which was never in history imported to Europe legally. Turns out, her husband is a well known person for conservationists in Panama, and for all the wrong reasons.

Asbestos is more lethal than previously known. New figures, recognized by EU-institutions show that 70 000 – 90 000 Europeans die of asbestos related cancer each year.

CAMPOBELLO DI MAZARA –  Bearing the brunt of deadly heat waves and extreme weather, migrant farm workers in Italy and Spain are on the frontline of Europe’s climate emergency. While the media has focused on the impact of rising temperatures on European citizens, hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers in Italy and Spain toil away in 45°C temperatures picking olives, harvesting tomatoes, planting seeds, and irrigating crops. 

RJIM MAATOUG - Importing the Saharan sun to supply Europe with clean and low-cost energy : this is the dream that European countries have been entertaining with certain players in the private energy sector for decades. Once buried, projects to export solar energy from the North African deserts to European shores are now resurfacing. 

MALELA - This investigation documents the company's environmental damage in a Mangrove natural park, foremost among which is its ground-level flaring, a practice that has been banned in the country since 2015, and which is the cause of very high CO2 emissions and very significant nuisance for agricultural activities, the main means of subsistence for the populations. 

WORLD - Cereal is the new petroleum, farmland the new reservoirs of oil, and ships loaded with grain are the new pipelines. As the value of crops increases, every country in possession of this resource is in a position of power, and its transport to market is a politically-charged operation.

LONDON/TIRANA - Our team reported on the field in Albania, traveling to the cities of Tirana, Kukes, Elbasan and meeting young people who had recently been forcibly returned from the UK after arriving in small boats across the English Channel from Calais, France.

CAÏRO - This year, Egypt is hosting the international climate summit COP27. An African first of symbolic importance, but international organisations like Amnesty International point to the serious abuses in Egyptian prisons. They see the Egyptian presidency as an attempt to polish the regime's image before the international community.

KIMINA - In 2006, the British company Tullow Oil discovered oil reserves in the Albertine Region of northwestern Uganda, with 6.5 billion recoverable barrels. At the beginning of 2022, the French oil company Total secured an agreement with the governments of Tanzania and Uganda and the Chinese state company CNOOC to start constructing the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). The project will create the largest oil heated pipeline covering 1,443 kilometres between Hoima in Uganda and Tanga in Tanzania, from where the crude oil will be exported.

MINSK - "Belarusian government allocated money from the budget to fund projects of Chyzh and Tomaševskij. Businessmen have been given benefits and exclusive opportunities to increase their income."

In 1987, a year after the Basel environmental disaster that left 1.5 million fishes dead in the Upper Rhine, nine European countries met and promised to restore the river including reintroducing Atlantic salmon by the year 2000 in its natural reproduction habitat in Switzerland. 35 years later, migratory fish travel up the river but are still stuck in France and can’t enter the Swiss confederation.

According to a 1980 international UN law, the Northeastern Atlantic countries must meet regularly to agree on a fishing quota for each country––so that everybody gets a fair share and fish stocks don't get overfished. The multilateral agreements are supposed to ensure that no government exploits the moving fish resource within their borders.

The Sinking Cities Project is an ambitious, six city investigation into how coastal area are preparing for the threat of climate change-caused sea level rise. Brought to you by Unbias the News and The Dublin Inquirer, the investigation targeted Alexandria, Egypt; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Dublin, Ireland; Karachi, Pakistan; Lagos, Nigeria and Rotterdam, Netherlands.

KYIV - This story is about the readiness of Ukrainian iron and steel industry – the second largest generator of foreign exchange earnings and a significant polluter, to implement green production technologies after the end of the war.

Cycling is indispensable in the European Union’s efforts to reduce emissions – this was clear from the European Urban Mobility Framework a year ago. But as policymakers set ambitious targets, transport is emitting more than before, using a third of the EU's energy, and keeping Europe dependent on Russian oil.

EUROPE - From red deer traces and half wild horses, to ecoducts and tree plantations, till mountain ranges and free flowing rivers. They have something in common: these are the roads and routes that nature uses. 

South-East Asia’s informal workers are fighting to stop their livelihoods going up in flames with the expansion of waste-to-energy plants. 

LATINA - How, through debt, a network of intermediaries linking India to the Pontine countryside keeps thousands of Indian workers under blackmail, exploited in one of the largest fruit and vegetable districts in Europe.

It’s a global problem on the rise. Digital image-based sexual abuse – a catch-all phrase that includes what is often called “revenge porn,” but also deepfake pornography and “upskirting” – exploded across European countries during the pandemic, according to aid organisations.

Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a shrimplike crustacean a few centimeters long, supporting the marine food chain around Antarctica. The Antarctic krill fishing industry has been growing in the last two decades, driven by the global growth of aquaculture. Krill is considered a valuable alternative to wild fish as a protein ingredient for fish feeds, especially for salmon, trout and shrimp.

HUELVA - Across the southern Iberian Peninsula, plastic greenhouses stretch to the horizon where rain-fed olives, wheat and grapes were traditionally grown. Spain and Portugal are Europe’s main producers of water-intensive berries. But the region is also one of the continent’s driest areas, where droughts are becoming more frequent. Reports have warned Europe’s fruit garden is in danger of becoming a desert before the end of the century.

KAYAR - Over half a million tonnes of fish are turned into fishmeal and fish oil to feed animals in industrial aquaculture systems and on intensive farms and demand is

IXQUISIS - In Latin America, defending natural resources such as water is a deadly pursuit. According to the latest Global Witness report, 1.773 environmentalists were murdered in the last 10 years. Sebastián Alonzo, a 68 years old subsistence farmer from the Ixquisis micro-region in Guatemala, was murdered while demonstrating against the hydroelectric company that would divert the river and affect the crops which his family and community depended upon.

GDANSK - The Vistula Spit Canal has been a decades-long political prizeproject for the Polish government. The construction has drawn controversy as it cuts straight through a Natura 2000 conservation area. Russian state-sponsored media and the Kremlin, have flasely claims it will devastate the Baltic sea, the lagoon, and local wildlife, but have not provided any independent scientific evidence to back their claims.

Zugdidi, Georgia - As a result of the ongoing conflict in 1992-93, Zugdidi hosted the largest number of IDPs, the material prepared within the framework of the project is based on the personal memories of some of them.  

LELESTI - For years they inhaled it. Former workers of the asbestos-cement factories in Romania worked without any protection against the toxic dust. Except a milk ratio. It was supposed to protect against cancer and toxicity, or so they believed during communism. Long privatized and shut down, the factories still have their marks on people’s lungs. The diseases appear decades after the exposure.

ABUJA- This story demonstrates that although it is illegal to import used clothes into Nigeria, UK exporters continue to contravene the law by doing the contrary which is now polluting the country's ecology. It demonstrates how UK exporters provided Nigerian vendors with low-quality, deteriorating clothing, forcing them to burn unsold items in public.

EUROPE - Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has upended decades of energy policy and a long-term dependence on Russian gas. Across Europe, governments are scrambling to find alternate energy supplies for the coming winter. 

PANGUINTZA - In Ecuador, cocoa farmers with UN financing and the support of a Dutch Foundation implemented blockchain technology to undermine the market power of big food companies and create more transparency in international supply chains. It’s a desperate intent to fight back illegal gold mining in the Amazon and generate more income for peasants.

BWINDI - The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park in Uganda has been chosen by the US National Health Institute (NHI) as a ‘hotspot’ for a potential new outbreak of a zoonotic disease like Monkeypox, Covid or Ebola.

SKOPJE - Sunny North Macedonia falls short of solar thermal expectations. Using solar thermal technology to convert sunlight into heat should be a no-brainer in North Macedonia. After all, it’s one of the world’s sunniest countries. But meager subsidies and insufficient regulation have stymied projects, despite the economic benefits that experts concur are there for the impoverished country.

WORLD - Everyday, 30 species of insects disappear from the face of the planet. A quarter of European invertebrates are now on the verge of extinction and, in some areas, the reduction in insect biomass reached 75 per cent in just 27 years.

LVIV - The Ukrainian LGBTQI + community has been trying to organize parades since 2012 - then the organizers of the event canceled them because they were afraid for their safety. Today they are fighting not only for their rights but also at the frontline.

DAKAR - Kris Berwouts went to Senegal with the question: 'What are Senegal's strengths and vulnerabilities when it comes to the risk of jihadism spilling over from the Sahel? This received a boost in 2012 in Mali and has since rapidly spread to Burkina Faso and Niger.

ALENTEJO - It hasn't been this dry in Portugal for a thousand years. But in the Alentejo, there have long been debates about the right way to farm in times of drought and record temperatures. This is mainly due to a dam that is supposed to provide sufficient water.

VODNANY - In Babiš's poultry factories, there was an organized violation of the labor code, while the management of the poultry factories could not help but know that they were cooperating with the underworld in the exploitation of Vietnamese workers.

The price of energy from woody biomass.

LJUBLJANA - What is the cost of security companies, such as G4S? One way of calculating the harm is counting the dead and the injured. 

ZEELAND - To whom does the Dutch province of Zeeland belong? Partly to Belgians, who own up to a fifth of the agricultural land in the southernmost part of the province. The Dutch research collective Spit and the Belgian platform Apache went in search of the large landowners and answered the question: why are they active there?

Aragón (Spain), Herefordshire (United Kingdom) and Lower Saxony (Germany) have become areas with a very high density of intensive farms. An international investigation reveals the dynamics behind the expansion and the pollution of rivers, aquifers and even tap water that it brought along.