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

COI Experts

Aggregators of COI

Aggregators of COI:

Search for archived material by Country. 

Refworld now states: "The English Refworld site no longer contains an extensive COI collection, with the exception of COI produced by UNHCR. Users are referred to www.ecoi.net for country-of-origin information, which is a database maintained by UNHCR’s longstanding partner ACCORD, part of the Austrian Red Cross."

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

  • UN Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, 

                Countries

  • UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,

ReliefWeb: Countries

ReliefWeb: Updates by Country, Theme & Content Format

Other UN Sources of COI

Countries

Health Topics (topic: HIV includes Country Information)

Tip: Click link Countries to search by country name.  Also provides Global Aids Update 2024.    

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

Link: Security Council Resolutions.  Click a year, like: 2024

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. 

Governments that Publish COI

Governments:

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. Click: EN > English publications

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

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

NGOs, Institutes, Centers, Commissions & Committees that Publish COI

Supports searching by country and by issue.

Follow links to countries or topics.

  • InSight Crime ("investigation and analysis of organized crime")
  • International Crisis Group, groups Latest Updates by region/country and by global issues.

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

Recent News

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

  • 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 NBC Out news.

Aid To Proving Ethnicity: Ethnologue: Languages of the World