Belgium

Jane Evelyn Atwood spent a decade photographing the life of female inmates, from childbirth to conjugal visitsJane Evelyn Atwood began photographing in women’s prisons in 1989, and the work consumed her for a decade. She visited 40 institutions across the US and Europe, in Israel and the former Soviet Union collecting images and first-hand stories from inmates in the most comprehensive project of its kind. Her prison book was called Too Much Time, a title that might equally have referred to her own obsessive immersion in the subject and to the lives of the people she photographed. In her introduction she wrote: “People often ask how I could pursue such a ‘sad’ subject for so long. Curiosity was the initial spur. Surprise, shock and bewilderment gradually took over. Rage propelled me along the road.”Many of Atwood’s pictures, revisited in a new exhibition, are harrowing; some helped to change the world. (Her image of a woman giving birth in handcuffs in an Alaska jail sparked an international campaign to ban that barbaric practice. The UK ended the practice in 1997; a federal law in the US eventually followed though shackling remains widespread.) Taken together, Atwood’s images are a testament to her determination to provide a full inside story.Jane Evelyn Atwood’s Women in Prison photographs are on show as part of Inside /Outside: Counterviews on Prison at the Delta, Namur, Belgium until 28 January Continue reading...

Mutualités Libres says improving air quality ensures sustainability of the social security systemWhy would a health insurance company study air pollution? Because, as Christian Horemans, an environment and health expert with the Belgian mutual insurer Mutualités Libres, explains: “It has an enormous impact on public health and an enormous cost for the Belgian compulsory health and disability insurance. We consider it our duty to analyse risks for the financial sustainability of health and disability insurance, part of social security.”The insurer’s recent study , carried out by a team that included Belgian and Dutch universities and research centres, compared health insurance claims from 1.2 million people in Belgium in 2019 with particle pollution in their neighbourhoods. The financial results were startling. Continue reading...

Across the EU, far-right ideas are becoming mainstream while refugees and Muslims are demonised. But change is still possibleI arrived in Brussels four decades ago as a student, scarred by the legacy of two deadly wars between India and Pakistan, and their constant enmity. I was ready to be seduced by a story of peace and cooperation – of former enemies reconciled by trade and pooled sovereignty. The EU and me were a perfect fit.Improbable as it may sound, Belgium drew me in, loved me back. University life was multicultural and exciting. Fulfilling a long-held dream, I became a reporter and started covering, later writing and commenting on, EU foreign policy and Europe’s global trade and aid policies. Continue reading...