International Refugee Law: Sources To Support Safe Harbor Participants & Other Interns: COI

• Electronic Immigration Network, ILPA and EIN Directory of Experts on Countries of Origin
• Rights in Exile Programme, Country of Origin Experts Listed by Country

Aggregators of COI:

• European Country of Origin Information Network (ecoi.net)
• Archived information: UNHCR, Refworld > Advanced Search

Search for archived material by Country of Origin and Category (Categories include: Country Information, Legal Information, Policy Documents and Reference Documents.)  

• University of Minnesota Human Rights Library, Resources for Researching Country Conditions

Tip: A country entry marked with a * contains more material.

• UN Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, 

                Human Rights by Country

• UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,

ReliefWeb: Countries

ReliefWeb: Updates by Country, Theme & Content Format

• UN-affiliated agency: World Health Organization

Countries

Health Topics (topic: HIV/AIDS includes HIV/AIDS in WHO regions)

• UN-affiliated body: UNAIDS

Tip: Search by country name and keywords.  Example: [country name] HIV discrimination  

• Office of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict,

Tip: "Where We Work" allows researchers to click on specific countries.

• UNICEF, Information by Country and Programme

• UN Security Council, Main page

Tab: Documents includes Resolutions.  Click a year, like: 2022

Tip: Title of resolution generally indicates which country (or region) is the subject of the resolution. 

Link: Reports of the Secretary-General

Tip: The Secretary-General issues reports about UN peacekeeping/building missions and conflict situations.  Title of report indicates which country (or region/regional body) is the subject of the report. 

• UN & University of Pennsylvania Law School, Global Women's Leadership Project (part of UN Women's Family Law Database)
• UN Women, Global Database on Violence Against Women 

  Tip: Advanced Search supports searching by country and form of violence. 

Governments:

• Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, National Documentation Packages

• Denmark: Danish Immigration Service, Country Information

Includes reports of the Danish Immigration Service's fact-finding missions to various countries.   

• Norway: Norwegian Country of Origin Information Centre, Landinfo

A few reports are available in English. Tab: English > Publications

• United Kingdom: Home Office, UK Visas and Immigration, Country Policy and Information Notes

• United Kingdom: Publications -- GOV.UK, can search by country

• United Kingdom: Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Human Rights Internationally

A document category like "Policy papers and consultations" supports filtering by: World Location. 

• United States: U.S. Department of State, home page 

Use tab: Policy Issues to drill down to thematic reports.  Also try tab: Countries & Areas.  

• United States: U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook

• Amnesty International, Search the Library

Supports searching by country and by issue.

• Amnesty International USA, Tools and Reports
• Asylum Research Centre, Publications includes country reports and commentary.
• Asylos: Research for Asylum provides country of origin information research notes (either in English or in French).  There is a country map that links to country-specific research on the home page of its website.
• Center for Gender & Refugee Studies accepts requests for its country conditions reports, certified expert declarations about countries/issues and practice advisories.  New users need to register for an account.  
• Child Soldiers Initiative
• CIVICUS ("the global civil society alliance"), Monitor: Tracking Civic Space
• Committee to Protect Journalists
• Deportation Global Information Project
• Freedom House, Home Page & tab: Reports, including Freedom of the Press and Freedom in the World
• Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean
• Human Rights Watch, Home Page

Follow links to countries or topics.

• Insight Crime ("investigation and analysis of organized crime")
• International Crisis Group, groups Reports & Briefings by region/country and by global issues.

 Also includes CrisisWatch (global conflict tracker), media releases, speeches and interviews.

• International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, Home Page includes a Resources tab that supports searching for laws by country.
• Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Global Internal Displacement Database (click on a country)
• OutRight Action International, click on map to find country-specific information
• Protection International, Protectionline provides news about human rights defenders by country (use map).   
• Reporters Without Borders > click tab: Countries & Regions
• Rights in Exile Program, Post-Deportation Monitoring Network: Country Directory
• Transparency International, Global Corruption Barometer

• The Washington Office on Latin America: Promoting Human Rights, Democracy & Social Justice, Home Page
• World Justice Project, > Research and Data includes World Justice Project Rule of Law Index (Index covers 128 countries/jurisdictions. It relies on "national surveys of more than 130,000 households and 4,000 legal practitioners and experts to measure how the rule of law is experienced and perceived worldwide.")

Elisa Mason, Forced Migration Current Awareness

Bloomberg Law supports searching of news by country.  Particularly useful for business & financial news.

Lexis+

• Select Content type: News
  • Can click: International by Region or International by Country 
• Google-style search from main screen search box: select All Categories > News

Westlaw Edge

• Under Specialty areas, select: News
  • Type region or country in search box.  Often, Westlaw will suggest a news database.  
    • Possible search: HLD(insert the name of your country) & add a date restrictor 
    • Similar search: Link: Advanced Search allows searching by words in Title or Lead Paragraph. 
  • From News, follow link: International.  At this point, can click on a region or country and search. 

Home Office, UK Border Agency, Country Policy and Information Notes

Tip: These documents generally include key news sources.  Skim the table of contents (and maybe also titles of Annexes). 

BBC News, Country Profiles (& news stories provided by the BBC)

Tip: In a BBC country profile, the "Media" section describes and links to websites of press, television and radio sources for the country. 

NBC News, including Out News

• Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a searchable reference work that catalogs nearly 7,000 known languages.