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The Use of Country of Origin Information in Refugee Status Determination: Critical Perspectives

Document number
2187
Date
2009
Title
The Use of Country of Origin Information in Refugee Status Determination: Critical Perspectives
Author/publisher
Home Office United Kingdom
Availability
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Document type(s)
Research/Study/Analysis,
Keywords
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Summary
The first paper of this study investigates the use of COI as objective evidence in reaching refused initial decisions by Home Office case owners. Given that decisions to grant asylum at the first instance are not available to IAS COI researchers, the cases in the sample are all refused decisions, in the form of RFRLs that have been given permission to appeal. The paper analyses a sample set of 83 RFRLs for 8 countries over a six month period.

The second paper of this study examines the use of COI by Immigration Judges in second instance decision making. As it was not possible to gain access to a sample of both allowed and refused appeals from the AIT, the sample was drawn from cases that IAS had open at the time of collection. In order to provide a parallel to the RFRL study, the sample contains only determinations in unsuccessful appeals. The paper analyses a sample set of 39 determinations from the same 8 countries as the RFRL study.
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