We're excited to share big news for anyone looking for Country of Origin Information in the UK and beyond: After four years of close collaboration with the Asylum Research Centre (ARC) Foundation, we are bringing this partnership to the next level by creating a single centre of expertise on Country of Origin Information (COI).

ARC Foundation is transferring its projects of reviewing COI produced by government and intergovernmental COI units to us. The charity  will close down in March 2022. We are excited to be taking ARC Foundation's important projects forward, and will continue them alongside all of our existing activities, including producing case-specific COI reports, publishing thematic COI reports and delivering COI research training.

We hope that this change will make all of our work more centralised and therefore even more accessible to partners and beneficiaries; and by reducing the administrative demand of running two separate organisations, we will be able to dedicate even more time to our COI work.

We are incredibly grateful to have been able to collaborate so closely and to benefit from ARC Foundation’s knowledge, experience and expertise to develop our work over these past years. We proudly look back on ARC Foundation and Asylos’ joint work so far:

• 4 thematic reports published on Albania (trafficking), Vietnam (re-trafficking), Ghana (LGBTIQ+ persons) and Nigeria (Disability), which have been downloaded 9,576 times
• 3 training curricula developed on Basic COI research, child-specific and disability-related COI research, reaching 441 legal representatives or those assisting asylum seekers 
• 1 tool as part of the ‘Principles Series’ on conducting COI research on disability
• Our Afghanistan COI Repository that is updated on a weekly basis - an emergency response to the crisis in Afghanistan developed jointly with Clifford Change and supported by Refugee Action

As well as countless instances of learning from and supporting each other, and building joint partnerships with actors such as Clifford Chance and Refugee Action.

To find out more about Asylos taking forward former ARC Foundation projects, contact Emily or Fatima, Asylos’ Programme Managers.