UNHCR released its annual Global Trends report, covering displacement that occurred during 2019. The report says the number of people forcibly displaced was 79.5 million at the end of 2019, leaving the population of forcibly displaced at another record high.

The US Department of State released its annual report on the freedom of religion, covering 2019.

ACCORD published a series of query responses on FGM, in 13 countries.

The US Department of State released its annual report on human rights, covering 2019.

The UNHCR Representation in Japan developed a machine translation service for RSD stakeholders to use ecoi.net in the Japanese language.

Human Rights Watch published its annual World Report, covering events in 2019.

ACCORD recently published three reports: a COI compilation on Ethiopia, on the current situation in Venezuela, on conscription and dedovshchina in Russia.

An article in the International Journal of Refugee Law discusses standards regarding the use of COI in UK Upper Tribunal country guidance cases.

Sharon Rusu, former head of the IRB's Documentation Centre, was invited to speak at the joint EASO-ACCORD conference on COI methodology, but unfortunately had to cancel participation. With her kind permission, we're publishing the notes for the opening remarks she prepared. In them, Ms. Rusu gives insights into the early days of COI research and the development of quality standards.

In November 2019, we updated our country priorities. These priorities define which sources are covered on ecoi.net, i.e. which documents you can expect to find for a country. The update is based on Austrian, European and global asylum statistics and affects what sources we cover for what countries.