The report “Human rights issues concerning Kurds in Syria” is the product of a joint fact finding mission by the Danish Immigration Service (DIS) and ACCORD/Austrian Red Cross to Damascus/Syria, Beirut/Lebanon, and Erbil and Dohuk in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in January/February 2010.

In a four week e-learning phase with a subsequent face-to-face meeting participants will acquire extensive knowledge and practical skills in the field of Country of Origin Information Research. The next Blended Learning Course by the COI Training Network will be held in May / June 2010.

The Researcher is published three 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 provisional statistics on the number of asylum applications in 2009 in industrialized countries.

The report published by the UK-based Immigration Advisory Service (IAS) explores how individuals from four stakeholder groups use COI and what factors impact on their level of use and approach to COI. Data was gathered from UK Borders Agency staff, legal representatives, immigration judges and experts.

Texts from sources which granted us permission to do so are from now on published directly on ecoi.net. Metadata such as publication date, suggested citation, etc are displayed in a standardised form.

ACCORD released a revised edition of the report on Clans in Somalia based on a COI Workshop held by Dr. Joakim Gundel in May 2009.

The Researcher is published three 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.

[continuing in German] Der Informationsverbund Asyl e.V., Gründungsmitglied von ecoi.net, feiert sein zehnjähriges Bestehen mit einem Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Heiner Bielefeldt: “Schutz für Flüchtlinge! Und für Migranten? Zum Verhältnis von Migrationspolitik und Flüchtlingsschutz” am 23. September 2009 in Berlin.

With the Italian version of the COI Training Manual, translated by the Consiglio Italiano Rifugiati (CIR), the manual is now available in seven languages.