JX Fund – European Fund for Journalism in Exile

The 15th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC) will be held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, from October 19 – 23, 2027, and is being co-hosted by GIJN and De Vereniging van Onderzoeksjournalisten (VVOJ) — the Dutch-Flemish Association of Investigative Journalists — which has played an outsized role in promoting quality investigative reporting in the region and across Europe since its founding in 2002.

Alfred Friendly Press Partners, which has trained over 400 journalists from 90 countries for over 40 years, is now accepting applications for its 2026 program. The fellowship is a four-week in-person program focused on foreign journalists who are living in exile in the US. The program builds skills and resiliency in these areas: Security, Legal, Journalism and Entrepreneurship.

Twenty years after the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, Russian independent journalism survives only in exile, with a new generation citing her courage as their guiding principle against state repression. For many opponents of the current regime, her murder marked a definitive turning point in Russia’s post-Soviet trajectory, signaling the end of pluralism and the beginning of an irreversible slide into authoritarianism.

RSF brought together EU institutions and exiled journalists to discuss countering Kremlin propaganda through the Svoboda satellite package. The initiative reaches millions of households in Russia and Belarus, helping exiled outlets bypass internet censorship and reconnect with audiences at home. The event also highlighted the need for continued support for exiled media.

Independent Russian media in exile play a crucial role in providing audiences inside Russia with alternative information about the war and its consequences. CEPA argues that Western governments should treat these outlets as a strategic capability, supporting their access to audiences, credibility and digital infrastructure rather than undermining their efforts to challenge the Kremlin’s monopoly over information.

Five years after the Taliban’s takeover, research organizations and countless other Afghan-led networks persist—training scholars, running underground classrooms, providing legal aid by phone. With NED support, over a thousand partners were evacuated to safety. Despite erasure from public life, Afghan women and civic leaders continue building the foundations for their country’s future.

Natalia Belikova of Press Club Belarus hasn’t returned home since 2019 — not even for her father’s funeral. Since Lukashenko’s 2020 crackdown, over 1,000 journalists fled into exile, facing funding gaps, cyberattacks, and fading ties to audiences back home. She discusses censorship workarounds, ongoing arrests, and what keeps Belarusian exile media going.

Coffee in the morning, fear by afternoon: an Afghan journalist works undercover for an exiled media outlet, dreading every knock at the gate. After interviewing a woman with a disability about domestic violence, she halts publication — fearing surveillance cameras could expose her identity.

At Belarus’s New Belarus conference, Media IQ’s Pavliuk Bykouski presented Press Club Belarus data (2025–26) on exiled independent media: 133 accounts across 13 newsrooms, views growing from 280M to 448M, and 31.9% of Belarusians reporting contact with independent media. The article examines what the data shows — and where it falls short.

In this podcast episode from taz Panter Stiftung’s “Freie Rede” series, jurist and writer Maxim Znak, journalist and photographer Sergei Balai, and journalist Alena discuss a law forcing exiled Belarusians to return home to renew passports—risking arrest if they do, or losing valid ID if they don’t—and its impact on those who fled after the 2020 protests.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 challenged much of the common Western understanding of Russia. How can the world better understand Russia? What are the steps forward for Western policy? The Eurasia Center’s “Russia Tomorrow” series seeks to reevaluate conceptions of Russia today and better prepare for its future tomorrow.

Russia’s parliament unanimously passed a law targeting exiled critics, including “foreign agents,” with frozen bank accounts, revoked driving licenses, and denied consular services like passport renewal. RSF warns the Kremlin is extending repression beyond its borders to silence independent journalism abroad.

Since Russians invasian in 2022 many journalists emigrated to keep independently reporting about the war to Russians, many outlets have launched English-language versions of their publications in order to find new revenue streams to support their work, as the Russian authorities have introduced increasingly restrictive legal measures targeting support for independent media.

Amu TV was born out of the collapse of Afghanistan’s media landscape, and is one of the most influential exiled media outlets serving Afghanistan today. By broadcasting via satellite from the US, the channel has bypassed Taliban censorship and reached millions of viewers inside the country, offering a rare space for uncensored news, political debate, entertainment, and more.

In a series of workshops, exiled journalists now living in the UK told how all faced significant barriers to continuing their careers. Many struggled to gain a foothold in the UK media industry, so the Rory Peck Trust is partnering with City St George’s, University of London, to enable one journalist-in-exile to complete an M.A. in International Journalism.

When an autocracy persecutes, scilences, intimidates its critics outside the country, it is referred to as transnational repression. The topic has gained prominance in recent years, as dissidents from russia and belarus have increasingly sought refuge in the EU. But regimes suppress not only activities inside their own borders, but also try to pressure ones in exile.

Websites of at least six exiled Belarusian news outlets and one journalists’ association, including Zerkalo and Reform.news, have been targeted since March by DDoS attacks, which aim to overwhelm websites with floods of internet traffic. The targeted media sites were all effectively banned from operating in Belarus after authorities labeled them “extremist” groups.