Supported projects

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.

Everywhere people are on the move. In search of a better life. Europe is bursting at the seams with new citizens. The old continent is struggling with the immigration phenomenon; and handling it with amazing ineptitude. The question is not: who is welcome and who is not? The question has to be: how are we to accommodate all these newcomers?

KINSHASA -  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.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO - 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.

Due to the banking crisis the Belgian government had to bail out 4 major financial institutions in 2008 and 2009 to prevent them from bankruptcy. 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?

TALLINN - According to experts, Estonian financial institutions are popular among criminals for laundering money because Estonia offers cheaper currency transactions than Russia and less regulation than in the EU. Its convenient location for such transactions adds to the appeal.

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’.

Debby Huysmans shows a photographic research on forgotten and isolated communities in Siberia. The two longest rivers of Siberia, the Yenisey and Lena, guided the photographer through the desolated area in search of individuals who experience this area as their biotope and the marks they leave in the landscape that surrounds them. Remainders of dreams of the past and signs of hope for the future appear through the daily environment.

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.