The US Department of State released its annual report on international religious freedom covering 2012.

Freedom House publishes its annual report Freedom of the Press. The country reports will be added to ecoi.net as soon as they become available. Our featured topics on Afghanistan (security situation in Kabul), Dagestan (security situation), Nigeria (Boko Haram) and on Somalia (events related to al-Shabaab) were updated.

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 US Department of State released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, covering 2012.

We now cover more sources regularly on ecoi.net: three additional UN committees, two additional UN missions, the Inter Press Service news agency, the Women News Network, and Caucasian Knot.

The COI Unit of the Austrian Federal Asylum Office published a new version of its working methodology.

UNHCR released statistics on the number of asylum applications in 2012 in 44 industrialized countries, showing an increase by 8 per cent. The highest increase is reported for asylum requests from Syrians.

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

Human Rights Watch published its annual World Report, covering events in 2012.

The featured topics on Afghanistan, Dagestan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia have been updated. No further updates for the featured topics on Syria and Abyei.

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