UNHCR and the Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and Asylum Research and Documentation (ACCORD), a department of the Austrian Red Cross, are partnering up for a streamlined content division between their protection information databases, Refworld and ecoi.net.

ACCORD published an Afghanistan report on the economic, humanitarian and security situation in three cities: Kabul, Herat and Mazar-e Sharif.

The Austrian Federal Administrative Court and ACCORD organised a symposium in May 2018 to discuss the possibilities and limits of COI research.

In August 2018, 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.

Issues covering the year 2017 are now available. The new overviews are extended to show more aspects of the data. The overviews are published by ACCORD and based on data collected by the Armed Conflict & Location Event Data Project (ACLED).

The Researcher is published two times a year by the Refugee Documentation Centre (RDC) in Ireland. It is a publication which combines academic papers, summaries of caselaw, guides to new legislation, reports of conferences, articles on RDC services and items of country of origin information. 

The new version of ecoi.net is online. The new website features a modern design, a new search engine, and more speed.

With the latest quarterly releases, overviews for the full year 2016 are now available. The overviews are published by ACCORD and based on data collected by the Armed Conflict & Location Event Data Project (ACLED). Please note: The versions for some countries for the 2016 quarters 1-3 contained errors and will be replaced.

UNHCR and ACCORD have developed an e-learning course on country of origin information (COI). The course is built around a case study, and takes the learner through some of the main questions on COI research methodology, including source assessment.

New featured topics on Turkey (refugees, i.e. international protection) and on Egypt (Copts) are now available. The featured topics on Afghanistan, Nigeria, the Russian Federation, and Somalia, all now dealing with the security situation, have been updated.