Women and Country of Origin Information campaign

Country of Origin Information is needed within an asylum or human rights application to help substantiate an asylum-seeker's testimony. We've run the Women and COI campaign since 2005 to improve access and availability of country of origin information in relation to women.

Researching conditions in countries of origin affecting women is particularly difficult because:

researchers in the field tend to focus on the male experience as indicative of human rights conditions
less attention is given to issues affecting women, therefore there is less information to draw from when researching women's individual cases
there is a lack of awareness of types of gender persecution and their impact on women
mainstream databases haven't included gender catagories, therefore information staff are not prompted to source information on gender and it is difficult for users to retrieve information

Our campaign aims to:

raise awareness of gender issues in relation to COI amongst legal practitioners, COI researchers and refugee women
improve access and availability of country of origin information relating to women
improve the quality of COI submitted within women's applications

Research - We've produced a guide to researching COI: Country of Origin and Women: Researching gender and persecution in the context of asylum and human rights claims. The guide examines what COI is and how it is used within the determination process, the difficulties women experience in substantiating their claim, types ofgender related harm and their impact on women, and strategies for researching gender related claims.

We have produced two guidance notes on researching country information on women: Case Research Guidance Notes: Country of Origin Information Resources and Case Research Guidance - Searching the internet and electronic databases.

Policy and Campaigns - We've worked with the Advisory Panel on Country Information (APCI) to improve the coverage of gender in Home Office COI reports. We sit as an observer to the panel and have drafted a research brief for the thematic review of gender in Home Office COI reports. See the APCI website for further information.

We've submitted a policy briefing to EURASIL, a group of 27 EU member states discussing common guidelines for COI production. Our paper Researching country of origin information on gender and persecution in the context of asylum and human rights claims was presented at a EURASIL workshop on gender and COI issues.

Partnership working - In partnership with EIN and HJT we've made resources on women more accessible. EIN/HJT are web based specialist information providers on UK immigration and refugee law. Their site is used as a research tool by legal representatives and COI researchers. Together we've developed their country information database to hold a dedicated women's page for each country, searchable by types of gender related harm. This has improved access and availability of resources related to women.

We've met with the Home Office Country of Origin Information Service (COIS) team to discuss accuracy and coverage of information relating to women in COI, and given consultation on streamlining gender throughout their reports.

We founded and Chair the COI Practitioners Forum.

We delivered a Master Class entitled ‘Strategies for improving COI research in relation to women' to COI professionals as part of the ACCORD Network III 1^st COI Master Class in Vienna in June 2007. The workshop was attended by 19 COI researchers, from governments and NGOs, representing 14 different European countries. ACCORD produces ecoi.net, a country of origin information database, where you can also access more information on ACCORD, training, and events.