Human Rights Watch published its annual World Report, covering events in 2019.

ACCORD recently published three reports: a COI compilation on Ethiopia, on the current situation in Venezuela, on conscription and dedovshchina in Russia.

An article in the International Journal of Refugee Law discusses standards regarding the use of COI in UK Upper Tribunal country guidance cases.

Sharon Rusu, former head of the IRB's Documentation Centre, was invited to speak at the joint EASO-ACCORD conference on COI methodology, but unfortunately had to cancel participation. With her kind permission, we're publishing the notes for the opening remarks she prepared. In them, Ms. Rusu gives insights into the early days of COI research and the development of quality standards.

In November 2019, we updated our country priorities. These priorities define which sources are covered on ecoi.net, i.e. which documents you can expect to find for a country. The update is based on Austrian, European and global asylum statistics and affects what sources we cover for what countries.

ACCORD is happy to have welcomed representatives of the COI community at the joint EASO/ACCORD conference on COI methodology in Vienna. There were two occasions for this event: The 20th anniversary of ACCORD and the publication of the revised EASO COI Report Methodology.

The European Asylum Support Office (EASO) has published a COI report on the security situation in Pakistan.

The US Department of State released its annual report on international religious freedom covering 2018, as well as its annual report on human trafficking (covering Aprul 2018 to March 2019).

UNHCR released its annual Global Trends report, covering displacement that occurred during 2018. The report says the number of people forcibly displaced was 70.8 million at the end of 2018, leaving the population of forcibly displaced at another record high.

EASO published a new COI report methodology, updating the 2012 version, as well as a style guide.