The European Journalism Center released a handbook on the verification of digital content, which is freely available online. While it is primarily targeted at journalists and aid responders, it provides valuable advice for anyone researching user-generated content / social media.

Freedom House published its annual report, “Freedom in the World 2014″. Some country chapters are already available online.

Human Rights Watch published its annual World Report, covering events in 2013.

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

The Irish Refugee Council is organising a conference on the Common European Asylum System on 17 & 18 January in Dublin.

The featured topics on Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Somalia have been updated.

Update 2018: With the relaunch of our system, there is no longer a daily mainenance period.

ecoi.net introduces scheduled maintenance period: each day at 05:15 CET the ecoi.net database will be deactivated. The downtimes will range from a couple of minutes to about an hour. This blog will remain usable during the maintenance periods.

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has published a training module on researching and using COI for their asylum adjudicators. The document contains guidelines, examples and exercises for asylum decision-makers.

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

Asylum Research Consultancy (ARC) and the Dutch Council for Refugees (DCR) published a mapping paper on NGO actors working on Country of Origin Information in Europe.