It's the 6th anniversary of World Anniversary Day. The turmoil in Iraq and Sudan have worsened conditions for thousands of innocent men, women and children. Canada continues to be one of the world's largest 'settlement solution' for refugees and internally displaced individuals. Citizenship and Immigration site here.
Refugee claimants in Canada are required to establish conditions in his or her country of origin necessitate accessing Canada's protection. In addition to refugee claimants, H&C applications, appeals of removal orders before the IAD, and PRRA applications also benefit or require information about the country of return.
Essentially the applicant is required to provide objective country condition documents that corroborate or buttress the claimant's allegations of hardship, risk and/or harm. Contained in this post is what I typically use in reviewing source country conditions.
One interesting site that I've recently come across is at the Foreign Policy website (www.foreignpolicy.com) and a recent article on that site - 'The Failed States Index of 2007'. The article ranks failed states. In my opinion, there should be a strong correlation between success before the RPD and the ranking of the claimant's country of nationality. Not surprisingly, the rankings of failed states does not match the top 10 refugee source countries for Canada. Inland refugee protection is granted only to those lucky few that have funds and access to an airplane (or cargo ship) transport to Canada.
Here's the top 15 (Surprisingly, Pakistan at 12 has 'beat out' Bangladesh, which is 16 - and North Korea at 13??):
1. Sudan
2. Iraq
3. Somalia
4. Zimbabwe
5. Chad
6. Ivory Coast
7. Democratic Republic of Congo
8. Afghanistan
9. Guinea
10. Central African Republic
11. Haiti
12. Pakistan
13. North Korea
14. Burma (also known as Myanmar)
15. Uganda
Here are a couple of other sites that are especially handy (if not absolutely essential reference material):
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home -- UNHCR but see http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rsd for research;
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/country_reports.html#countries -- UK Home Office (COI) Reports;
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/hr/c1470.htm -- US Department of State Country Reports;
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/irf/ -- US DoS - International Religious Freedom Reports;
www.freedomhouse.org -- a non-profit, non-partisan, "clear voice" for democracy and freedom;
http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php -- database and a way to graphically compare countries;
http://cgrs.uchastings.edu/about/ -- Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (actually, I haven't used this resource myself);
http://www.llrx.com/features/rsd2.htm -- A good starting point for the legal professional;
and, of course, don't forget to review the information available at the IRB's own website:
http://www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/research/index_e.htm
Jurisprudence is also makes for good submissions:
http://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fct/index.html
See also www.canlii.org for free online research.
and finally, a good resource from Georgetown:
http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/intl/guides/RefugeeProtection.cfm
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