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.

UNHCR released statistics on the number of asylum applications in 2014 in 44 industrialized countries, showing an increase by 45 per cent compared to 2013. Syria is the top country of origin, followed by Iraq and Afghanistan.

The UK Foreign & Commonewalth Office released its annual report on human rights in selected countries, covering 2014.

Amnesty International’s Annual Report 2014/15 was released today. As there was no annual report last year, the current edition covers 2014 and key events from 2013.

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

Human Rights Watch published its annual World Report, covering events in 2014.

The featured topics on Afghanistan (security in Kabul), Nigeria (Boko Haram), the Russian Federation (security in Dagestan) and Somalia (al-Shabaab) have been updated.

An abridged version of the revised edition of the training manual “Researching Country of Origin Information” is now available in German. It was published by Informationsverbund Asyl & Migration.

The revised edition of the training manual “Researching Country of Origin Information“, published by ACCORD in 2013, is now available in Russian. It was translated by UNHCR Ukraine.

The featured topics on Nigeria (Boko Haram), the Russian Federation (security in Dagestan) and Somalia (al-Shabaab) have been updated. Furthermore, a five-part report on Libya has been published jointly by the the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, the Belgian CGRS, Norway’s Landinfo and the Swedish Migrationsverket.