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 current issue contains an article on how ecoi.net selects information.

The European Asylum Support Office (EASO) published a COI report on South and Central Somalia. The report was co-authored by, i.a., the COI department of the Austrian Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum.

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

As part of the EASO Practical Guide series, the European Asylum Support Office published a guide informing about the main tools and tips for online research of country of origin information.

The Austrian Federal Administrative Court developed a checklist for assessing the quality of country of origin information decisions on international protection. We are publishing this checklist with kind permission.

The US Department of State released its annual report on international religious freedom covering 2013.

A new 224 pages COI report on Darfur (Sudan) has been published by ACCORD.

We have added a linklist on the role of objective evidence in the refugee status determination process to our blog. The linklist is maintained by Elisa Mason for the Fahamu Refugee Programme.

UNHCR released its annual Global Trends report, covering displacement that occurred during 2013. the report says “the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people worldwide has, for the first time in the post-World War II era, exceeded 50 million people”.

ecoi.net launches a community platform allowing for the creation of online discussion forums. High quality COI contributes to fair and efficient procedures for international protection. The community platform shall foster discussion, knowledge sharing and networking among organisations and professionals active in the field of COI.