On this page, you will find:
To find organisations working for LGBTQI+ rights, visit our Iran LGBTQI+ Resources page.
To find organisations providing legal or other types of assistance to refugees in Iran, visit our Iran Legal Assistance page.
COI Experts
Email: anwar1333@aol.com
Mr. Soltani works with the Institute of Linguists as an assessor of exams, and as a freelance translator and interpreter. He has published various research pieces and books regarding Kurdistan. Mr. Soltani is willing to authenticate documents and prepare reports on their originality, provided they are in Kurdish (Sorani dialect) or Farsi. Please note that Mr. Soltani will not prepare Country of Origin expert reports: his services on this website are regarding authentication only.
Email: aosanloo@uw.edu
Arzoo Osanloo is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington’s Law, Societies, and Justice Program with adjunct appointments in the School of Law and Departments of Anthropology, Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, Women’s Studies, and Comparative Religion. She received her Ph.D. in 2002 in Cultural Anthropology at Stanford University. Prior to that, she was a practicing attorney. At the University of Washington, Dr Osanloo conducts research and teaches courses focusing on the intersection of law and culture, including human rights, refugee rights and identity, and women’s rights in Muslim societies. Her main geographical focus is the Middle East, especially Iran. She has published in various journals, including American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology and Iranian Studies. Her book, The Politics of Women’s Rights in Iran (2009), is published by Princeton University Press. She is currently working on a new project that considers the Islamic mandate of forgiveness, compassion, and mercy in Iran’s criminal sanctioning system, jurisprudential scholarship, and everyday acts among pious Muslims.
Email: kausslbx@jmu.edu
Dr Bernard Kaussler is Assistant Professor of Political Science at James Madison University in Virginia. He has five years of experience providing advanced research and analysis, project management, and consultancy for government, private sector, and academic clients. He is willing to enter into discussion with legal representatives about providing expert reports. He has completed expert reports for asylum cases which have included gay rights, women’s rights, and cases involving dissidents and members of the opposition, as well minority rights (both ethnic and religious).
Email: szuke@mei.edu or charleswdunne@gmail.com
Charles W. Dunne is a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, a member of the John Hay Initiative, and has recently advised two presidential campaigns on Near East policy. He was Foreign Policy Adviser to the Director for Strategic Plans and Policy at the Joint Staff in the Pentagon (2007-2008), and was director of Middle East and North Africa programs from 2011 to 2015 at Freedom House, where he focused on human rights and democracy promotion in the region. Prior to joining Freedom House, he was Director for Iraq at the National Security Council from 2005-2007. Dunne spent 24 years as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service, serving overseas in Cairo, Jerusalem, and Madras, India, and later served as a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, where he contributed to the development of presidential initiatives to advance political reform and democracy in the Broader Middle East and North Africa. He is currently a Visiting Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. He is a frequent media guest on outlets such as BBC, al-Jazeera, and al-Hurra, and has appeared on CBS, Fox, and NPR. He has written for numerous publications, including the Washington Post, US News and World Report, the American Interest, and The National in Dubai. He has often spoken in public on Middle East issues on panels and major conferences.
Email: info@middleast-consulting.com or f.ghaderi@exeter.ac.uk
Dr Farangis Ghaderi is the founder and director of Middle East Consulting Ltd, a research and consultancy company based in the UK. She has worked as an independent Middle East expert since 2012 and has extensive experience in providing country expert reports, nationality assessment, and document authentication for court purposes. Dr Ghaderi holds a PhD in Kurdish Studies from the University of Exeter. As an academic she has published scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and has presented her research in international conferences. She speaks fluent Kurdish and Farsi and has working knowledge of Arabic and Dari. She is familiar with different Kurdish dialects and has prepared language expert reports for Kurdish asylum seekers from Iran and Iraq whose nationality have been disputed. Dr Ghaderi is prepared to provide country expert reports on Iran, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
Tel: +44 20 76 04 30 27
Skype: george.joffe
Email: email@georgejoffe.com
Professor Joffé is prepared to provide country of origin experts witness statements for Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morroco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. He is now retired but is still affiliated to the London Middle East Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Until 2017, Professor Joffé was an affiliated lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) in the University of Cambridge, where he also ran the Centre for North African Studies. From 2005 to 2010, he was a research fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford. From 1997 to 2000, Professor Joffé was the deputy-director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He regularly addresses professional audiences at the NATO Defence College in Rome, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in Geneva, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and NOREF in Oslo and the Royal College of Defence Studies in London. He has also advised the European Commission (DG Relex), EuropAid and the new External Action Service.
Email: icri.refugees@gmail.com
Contact: Maria Rohaly, Coordinator, Mission Free Iran
Website
Tel: +1 240-595-2633
Email: maria.rohaly@gmail.com
The International Coalition for the Rights of Iranian Refugees is a collection of international grassroots organizations advocating for refugee rights with a specialized, though not exclusive, focus on the Iranian refugee situation. Our mission is to protect and uphold the asylum rights of refugees in accordance with the mandate of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Email: refiranjs@gmail.com
Jaleh Saboktakin is Programme Manager (Protection) with Danish Refugee Council, currently based in South Sudan. Previously, Jaleh was working with UNHCR Iran for 6 years, managing higher education and repatriation programme for Afghan and Iraqi refugees. Jaleh has post-graduate degree in Development & Emergency Practice from Oxford Brookes University, specialising on issues related to durable solutions for refugees.
Kameel Ahmady is a social anthropologist and originally hails from Iranian Kurdistan. Kameel holds a post-graduate degree in anthropology and visual ethnography from the University of Kent and currently works on community development programmes with focuses on FGM, early child marriage and MGM/C (Male Circumcision). He has a background in social empowerment, family and children right initiatives, and has worked extensively on issues concerning local cultures, migration, minority rights and Middle East affairs. His more recent research projects include a comprehensive study (in English and Farsi/Persian) titled A Comprehensive Research Study On Female Genital Mutilation / Cutting in Iran-2015, a research conducted over the period of ten years along with a short anthropological film In the Name of Tradition on the issue of FGM ( in West Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah and Hormozgan). This research study has gained global recognition since it is the first film on FGM in Iran. He wrote three books and published on themes of gender, Diaspora, multiculturalism and modernity in the Middle East. Currently he advises governments and international NGO’s on FGM and related issues in Middle East. Moreover, he is effectively present at numerous international events and conferences.
Email: 2t.natalia@gmail.com
Ms. Natalia Tereshchenko is a researcher and project manager at the Oriental Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, where she focuses on religious and ethnic minority rights in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. She is also a researcher at the global online consultancy, Wikistrat.
Previously, Natalia has been working on legal assistance for Afghanistan through UNODC and has served as the Vice-Chair of the International Refugee Law Committee at the American Bar Association. Natalia’s expertise also includes issues of non-traditional security threats, negotiations with non-state actors and conflict transformation.
Email: rebwar@mideastconsultancy.com or info@mideastconsultancy.com
Dr Rebwar Fatah is the Director of the Middle East Consultancy Services. Dr Fatah has produced thousands of COI reports since he began working as an expert witness in 2000. In the past five years alone, Dr Fatah has produced 1,341 Expert Reports on the Middle East. These include:
- 830 Country Expert Reports
- 416 Document Authentication Reports
- 95 Nationality Reports
Dr Fatah’s reports have been commissioned for and cited in several immigration appeals, as well as family and criminal cases. Moreover, he has assessed many people from the Middle East whose nationality, native language, ethnicity, place of residence has been disputed, and has examined thousands of documents from the MENA region. In addition to a deep knowledge of the region’s administrative and bureaucratic cultures, Dr Fatah’s multilingual proficiencies enable him to understand, interpret and evaluate official documents in the Middle East. As a part of this work, Dr Fatah has produced his own methodology for document authentications and nationality examinations.
Dr Fatah has also provided written and oral evidence in court; among them are five Country Guidance Cases, two Turkish extradition orders and many other cases. Moreover, Dr Fatah has also reviewed and provided guidance on Home Office CPIN reports.
Dr Fatah regularly visits the Middle East, conducting fact-finding missions to ensure that his knowledge is up to date and based on reliable information. Dr Fatah speaks most of the Middle Eastern languages as well as their various dialects. Dr Fatah’s Country Expert Reports cover a wide range of issues, including the general security situation, sufficiency of protection, crimes of honour, healthcare, corruption, and at-risk groups of different sexual, religious, political and cultural profiles.
COI Resources
The following sections contain documents that can be consulted when looking for country of origin information.
This report presents COI on Iran focusing on issues identified to be of relevance in refugee status determination for Iranian nationals of the LGBTQI+ community. Research concentrated on events that took place between 1st January 2020 and 1 st December 2023.
This COI has been prepared by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) of the Australian Government for protection status determination purposes only. It provides DFAT’s best judgement and assessment at time of writing and is distinct from Australian Government policy with respect to Iran. The report provides a general, rather than an exhaustive, country overview. It has been prepared with regard to the current caseload for decision-makers in Australia without reference to individual applications for protection visas. The report does not contain policy guidance for decision-makers.
The report summarizes Amnesty International’s key findings on development in Iran during 2022.
Annual report on the human rights situation in Iran in 2022 from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the US Department of State.
The European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) has published a report on the situation of Afghan refugees in Iran, which covers key developments between October 2020 and November 2022. The report aims to provide information on the situation of registered and unregistered Afghan refugees in the country, which is relevant for international protection status determination.
Background to this document
The Iran Country of Origin Information (COI) Repository was started as part of an emergency response to
the crisis in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover in 2021. The initiative is coordinated by Asylos and
Clifford Chance.
Purpose of this document
This document is a collection of COI and its purpose is to address and pre-empt needs that arise as asylum
seekers who have fled the current situation in Afghanistan, and are in neighbouring states, will make
claims for international protection. This document builds on the existing Afghanistan COI Repository.
This document is intended to collect sources that are reporting on the situation for asylum seekers in Iran
and relevant source excerpts. Research themes for this report are devised in consultation with lawyers
representing Afghan asylum seekers seeking to evacuate Iran.
Published by the Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and Asylum Research and Documentation (ACCORD), the compilation contains general, historical, and political information about Iran as well as Iran’s treatment of different groups.
To find more COI on Iran, visit the Iran country page on ecoi.net.
Iran Legal Assistance
Find organisations offering legal and other types of assistance to refugees in Iran.
We are always looking to expand the resources on our platform. If you know about relevant experts, or you are aware of organisations and/or resources to include in our directories, please get in touch.
Last updated January 2024
