On this page, you will find:
To find organisations working for LGBTQI+ rights, visit our Iraq LGBTQI+ Resources page.
To find organisations providing legal or other types of assistance to refugees in Iraq, visit our Iraq Legal Assistance page.
COI Experts
Email: arg1@compuserve.com
Dr George is a consultant, writer and journalist, with extensive knowledge of the Middle East. Since 1984 he has worked as a freelance journalist, researcher and expert witness in political asylum cases involving the Middle East. He frequently commentates on Middle Eastern affairs for radio and television and contributes to the Observer, the Independent and the Guardian. He is a former Head of Research at the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce and a former Assistant Director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU). Since 2003, Dr George has acted as an Expert Witness for UK, US and European asylum and immigration tribunals, dealing with cases involving Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories and has produced some 4,000 reports.
Email: info@middleast-consulting.com or f.ghaderi@exeter.ac.uk
Dr Farangis Ghaderi is an academic and an independent Middle East expert with extensive experience in providing country expert reports, nationality assessment reports, and document authentication for court purposes. She is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, the University of Exeter and the director of Middle East Consulting Ltd. Dr Ghaderi holds a PhD in Kurdish Studies from the University of Exeter. She is the author of several peer-reviewed articles on Kurdish literature and culture and the co-editor of Derwaze, Kurdish peer-reviewed journal in humanities and social sciences. She speaks fluent Kurdish and Farsi and has a working knowledge of Arabic and Dari. She has studied different Kurdish dialects and has prepared expert language reports for Kurdish asylum seekers whose nationality have been disputed. Dr Ghaderi is prepared to provide country expert reports on Iran, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Turkey.
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, 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), EuropeAid and the new External Action Service.
Email: martin_jerrett@yahoo.com
From 2003-2008, Mr Jerrett worked in Iraq and also in Qatar for the UK Ministry of Defence as a Subject Matter Expert for the Iraqi Survey Group. He worked on a GIS mapping project and a tribal database in Iraq. Martin worked in a regional crime liaison office for Iraq on Doha, where he received recognition for his efforts and achievements. Mr Jerrett speaks Arabic and has also done extensive work in Libya and Yemen.
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.
Email: ralkhouri@gmail.com
A Jordanian economist specializing in the Middle East & North Africa, Riad has for over forty years trained, lectured, advised, and researched on a wide variety of socio-economic and other topics such as good governance, migration (including refugees), foreign aid, human rights, post-crisis economies, strategic planning, cultural familiarization, conflict resolution, NGOs, and sustainable development. His mother tongue is Arabic, and he is also fluent in English, with a strong working knowledge of French. Riad lives in Jordan and is a leading expert on the country and MENA generally, working locally and around the region at all levels with numerous Jordanian and international organizations, and writing and publishing widely on the country as well as regionally.
Email: thomas.mcgee@cantab.net
Telephone number: +44 75 94 70 42 72
Website
Twitter: @ThMcGee
Thomas McGee (BA Cantab; MA Exon) is an expert on stateless Kurds of Syria, and authentication of documents related to stateless Kurds (ajanib & maktumeen). He speaks Arabic and Kurdish (Kurmanci dialect). Thomas is currently a PhD Researcher at Melbourne Law School’s Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness.
Franck KAMUNGA CIBANGU, Directeur Executif
Droits Humains Sans Frontières ASBL, Im. Botour Apt. 5 C/Gombe, 861 Kinshasa
Tel: +243 98 20 93 18
Email: franckamunga@yahoo.fr
Droits Humains Sans Frontières work for the defence and promotion of human rights, for democracy and community development; towards peaceful conflict resolution and peace building in local communities and states in conflicts around the Great Lakes Region through mediation and reconciliation; promotion of gender equity through research and publication with research partners; promoting new information technology and communication for educational and social development; and fight against HIV / AIDS through health and reproductive education. DHSF provide free legal aid for the poor and needy; they conduct training on human rights, international humanitarian law, democracy, conflict resolution and the political participation of youth and women in countries in transition; and conducts research on peace and the peaceful resolution of conflicts in the Great Lakes region, on refugees and IDPs.
COI Resources
The following sections contain documents that can be consulted when looking for country of origin information.
This report provides information on the targeting and treatment of persons belonging to specific profiles in Iraq, as well as relevant context information in view of the assessment of international protection status determination for Iraqi asylum seekers, including refugee status and subsidiary protection and in particular for use in EUAA’s country guidance development on Iraq (2022).
The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the issue of legal and practical issues relating to access, freedom of movement and internal mobility in Iraq. This report should be read in conjunction with the EASO report, EASO COI Report – Iraq: Key socioeconomic indicators, which aims to provide information on key socio-economic indicators in Iraq focusing on Basrah, Erbil, and Baghdad, and highlighting aspects of the situation of IDPs in those areas, as well as women and children. Relevant indicators include the general economic situation, access to employment and livelihoods, poverty, food and water security, housing and living conditions, access to health care, access to education, access to support and assistance, and the
role of support networks.
The ‘Country Guidance: Iraq’ represents Member States’ joint assessment of the situation in the country of origin in relation to the applicable international and EU legislation on international protection. The guidance note, accompanied by the common analysis, was agreed by the EUAA Country Guidance Network of senior policy officials in May 2022 and was endorsed by the EUAA Management Board in June 2022.
Document link
UNHCR Eligibility Guidelines offer a legal interpretation of the refugee criteria in respect of specific profiles on the basis of social, economic, security, human rights, and humanitarian conditions in the country/territory of origin concerned.
Iraq Legal Assistance
Find organisations offering legal and other types of assistance to refugees in Iraq.
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 June 2023
