Last updated: 14 August 2024
For information about the Illegal Migration Act 2023, see our Legal Update blog here.
In an asylum or human rights claim, and in some types of immigration applications, you may need to provide objective evidence to the Home Office about your country of origin (or country of normal residence).
You will need to provide this information to the Home Office in support of your application in addition to the information you give in your substantive interview and any other documents that are directly about you.
Read this page to find out what objective country of origin information is, and where you can get it (whether or not you have a lawyer).
On this page, you will find the following information:
- What is objective evidence?
- What to do with objective evidence
- Key sources of general information
- Information about general human rights
- Information about armed forces
- Information about children
- Information about child labour
- Information about child soldiers
- Information about constitutions and national legislation
- Information about the death penalty
- Information about ethnic groups and minorities
- Information about internally displaced people (IDPs) and humanitarian issues
- Information about journalists and media
- Information about LGBTQIA+ people
- Information about medical care
- Information about religious freedom
- Information about women
- Information about female genital mutilation (FGM)
What is objective evidence?
Objective evidence is evidence about your country of origin, or particular people in your country, that is not based on what you or people you know personally say is the situation.
Objective evidence is evidence from independent, trusted sources such as human rights organisations or well-known and respected media networks.
Country of origin information can also be found in the Home Office’s own country policy and information documents. You can access them here.
There are also “country guidance” cases. These are asylum appeals chosen by the immigration tribunal to give legal guidance for a particular country, or a particular group of people in a particular country. To learn more about understanding case law, watch our video about Understanding Case Law by clicking here.
This page focuses on human rights reports and trusted journalism.
It is common for information relevant to your case to be found in ‘interest-group’ media sources, such as a political opposition newspaper or a report by a community group affected by the issue. These sources are often not considered as independent and reliable by the courts, because they are ‘on your side’.
Even if you use these less objective sources to first find the information, you should try and find the same information in more mainstream media, for example newspapers with good world/foreign reporting such as The Guardian, Independent, or New York Times, or in a human rights report.
What to do with the information
Watch our video below on Country of Origin evidence to find out what you should do once you have collected your objective evidence.
Key sources of information
