Experts on countries of origin by country

A strategic and results-oriented humanitarian expert with a proven ability to lead high-impact programmes, strengthen institutions, manage complex donor portfolios, and support governments and civil society in delivering sustainable humanitarian and development outcomes. Combines technical excellence with practical field experience, strong leadership, and a collaborative approach to achieving measurable results across the Middle East.

Fahim Abrar Abid is a legal researcher specialising in international law, human rights, and international protection. He has provided expert opinions in UK First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal proceedings, advised the University of London Refugee Law Clinic, and prepared materials for U.S. immigration matters (USCIS). His work focuses on country conditions, risk on return, political opinion (actual and imputed), minority protection, non-state actor threats, and the treatment of activists, journalists, detainees, and other at-risk groups. He is an Erasmus Mundus Scholar in International Law and Security, Founder of the Bangladesh Society of International Law, and has authored over 20 expert reports across multiple jurisdictions.

Reports delivery: Within 2 weeks (For emergency cases: 1 week)

Daniel is an Independent social worker and director of social work immigration matters specialising in assessments with separated asylum seeking children and families facing uncertainty with immigration matters. Providing expert reports  including international reunification assessments, best interest assessments (deportation), and age assessments. Daniel takes instructions from well-established legal firms in addition to well known charitable organisations working in the migration field. 

As a qualified social worker Daniel has managed services across the spectrum of statutory social work services from assessment through to adoption, and brings an extensive level of experience in providing services to separated (asylum seeking), children and families.

Throughout his career Daniel has provided guidance to numerous governmental agencies including assignments abroad in France and Albania. Daniel has represented services at the London Asylum Consortium (LASC),and has been part of the ADCS sub-group on age assessment and has produced anti-trafficking policy. 

With a keen interest in developing others Daniel holds a role at Sussex University as the School Tutor within the social work department. 

Dr. Ahmad is a Reader in Global Health Humanities with expertise in country-of-origin information, migration, and asylum-related issues. Her Country Expert work focuses on producing clear, evidence-based analysis to support legal and policy decision-making. She has published widely in high impact academic journals, media articles, and international conferences. She is committed to accuracy, impartiality, and maintaining high professional standards in all consulting engagements.

Dr. Ali is a leading authority on Middle Eastern law and politics, known for combining deep regional knowledge with sharp legal and political analysis. He works at the intersection of courts, policy, and academia, advising on some of the most complex and sensitive issues facing the region. His expertise spans constitutional law, conflict, governance, and international accountability, grounded in long experience with real-world cases and institutions. He is especially valued for his ability to explain complicated Middle Eastern realities clearly, persuasively, and with credibility.

Hussein Ali is an independent Country Expert and Expert Witness specialising in country conditions across the Middle East. He provides independent expert reports and litigation support in asylum, immigration and human rights proceedings before UK courts and tribunals. His work focuses on assessing country conditions, evaluating risk on return, examining the availability of state protection, and analysing the social, political, legal and humanitarian circumstances relevant to individuals seeking international protection.

His expertise covers persecution arising from political opinion, religion, ethnicity, gender, family and tribal dynamics, together with the treatment of vulnerable individuals including women, children, victims of trafficking, survivors of honour-based violence, forced marriage, organised criminal activity and extremist organisations. His reports are individually researched, evidence-based and prepared objectively in accordance with the overriding duty of an independent Expert Witness to assist the Court or Tribunal.

Goal-focused, strategic planner, and passionate leader with extensive experience implementing effective, global strategies to stabilize communities through capacity building, promoting human rights and democratization, and amplifying the value of communication. Skilled in collaborating with all members of the organization to build bridges across ideological divides, trusted to tailor language, tone, style, and format to match the audience. Passionate educator with two years’ experience as a High School Principal. Proactively pursues the development and execution of ethical leadership, personnel management, and clear research/discovery goals with comprehensive plans delivering measurable impact to in-house operations. 

An accomplished expert in Lebanese, Levantine, and MENA law, politics, and culture, Dr. Isaac Andakian brings extensive experience and a proven track record in political advisory roles. From 2001 to 2009, Dr. Andakian served as a trusted senior political adviser to two members of the Lebanese Parliament and a minister in the Lebanese cabinet. Over nine years, he counseled the Armenian Orthodox Community Court of Lebanon and the Municipality of the City of Anjar, Lebanon, from 2003 to 2012.

During Dr. Andakian’s… Read more

Historian, specialised in the history, politics and cultures of Iran and the Kurds.

I am a Consultant Psychologist with over 25 years of clinical experience specializing in complex trauma/C-PTSD. I have completed a doctorate degree in Psychology from Wolverhampton University and a clinical supervision training from Oxford University. My background includes senior NHS leadership roles, clinical team management, and policy development, alongside extensive experience in teaching, research and clinical supervision. 

As an Expert Court Witness, I have extensive experience assessing individuals and families for the Immigration & Asylum Chamber and Family Court, with a particular focus on high-stakes asylum cases involving risk of persecution, apostasy, and victims of trafficking, torture, sexual exploitation, and abuse. Utilizing a trauma-informed forensic framework, I address critical issues of credibility, memory inconsistencies, and sur place activities, providing the Tribunal with robust clinical evidence that bridges the gap between psychological vulnerability and legal disclosure hurdles. 

My expertise extends to comprehensive family and child assessments, focusing on attachment, transgenerational trauma, and the "best interests of the child" in deportation or care proceedings. I offer deep clinical insight into Muslim and… Read more

Dr. Patrick Christian is a psychoanalytic anthropologist with a doctorate in the psychopathology of ethnic and cultural violence. He has spent the past 36 years conducting field research in Eurasia, Southwest Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, the Horn of Africa, the Central Sahel, the Andean Mountains, the Amazon Basin, and Mesoamerica, as part of military, diplomatic, and humanitarian interventions in violent intra-state conflicts. With the exceptions of India, Iran and Russia, Dr Christian has personally lived in and/or worked in each country he specialises in.

Dr. Christian is a member of the American Anthropological Association’s Society for Psychological Anthropology and the American Psychological Association’s Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, Race, Conflict, and Violence.

Dr Christian’s work applies anthropology, psychology, and sociology to curate scientific understanding of specific subject communities’ lived-experiences – mentally and emotionally. His reporting illuminates the underlying psychosocial-emotional motivations behind individual and collective behaviour, both post-mortem and predictive of violent conflict.

Dr Christian’s field research focuses on civil-conflict… Read more

C. Christine Fair is a Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She previously served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and a senior research associate at the United States Institute of Peace.  Her most recent book is In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2018/2019).  She has authored, co-authored and co-edited several books, including Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (Oxford University Press); Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), Policing Insurgencies: Cops as Counterinsurgents (Oxford University Press, 2014); Political Islam and Governance in Bangladesh (Routledge, 2010); Treading on Hallowed Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations in Sacred Spaces (Oxford University Press, 2008); The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan (USIP, 2008), and The Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (Globe Pequot, 2008), among others.  

She is a member of Women in International Security, International Studies… Read more

Dr. Shaul Gabbay completed a BA at Bar Ilan University and an MA at Tel-Aviv University. In 1991 he received a Presidential Fellowship from the U.S. to continue his studies. In 1995 he completed the PhD program at Columbia University in New York and received an invitation from the University of Chicago for a Post Doctoral program. In 1998 Dr. Gabbay returned to Israel to join the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Professor Gabbay joined the University of Denver as the Director of the Institute for the Study of Israel in the Middle East at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies in 2001- 2010.  He continued his research at DU as a Senior Scholar until 2015 when he was appointed Director of the Global Research Institute.

His areas of expertise include Middle East cultures and societal norms,   Middle East conflicts, and human rights issues existing in Muslim societies.  He is regularly cited and acts as a commentator in national and international media such as the Associated Press, CBS, NBC, FOX and MSNBC.

The expert is lecturer in Kurdish and Gender Studies at the University of Exeter and has extensive experience in providing country expert reports, nationality assessment, and language analysis.

Independent researcher. Country expert reports, nationality assessment, language analysis, Gender-based violence, Ethnic and religious minorities in the Middle East, and Document authentication.

Dr. Antonio Giustozzi is a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He took his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is the author of several articles and papers on Afghanistan, as well as of seven books, War, politics and society in Afghanistan, 1978-1992 (Georgetown University Press), Koran, Kalashnikov and laptop: the Neo-Taliban insurgency, 2002-7 (Columbia University Press), Empires of mud: war and warlords in Afghanistan (Columbia University Press), Policing Afghanistan (with M. Ishaqzada, Columbia University Press, 2013), The army of Afghanistan (Hurst, 2016), the Islamic State in Khorasan (Hurst, 2018 and II ed 2022) and Taliban at war (OUP USA, 2019 and II ed. 2022). He also authored a volume on the role of coercion and violence in state-building, The Art of Coercion (Columbia University Press, 2011), one on advisory missions (Missionaries of modernity, Hurst, 2016), one on Jihadism in Pakistan (IB Tauris, 2023) and edited a volume on the Taliban, Decoding the New Taliban (Columbia University Press, 2009), featuring contributions by specialists from different backgrounds. He contributes regularly to the media and to periodical publications. In the past he worked among else as a consultant for the EUSR… Read more

Audra Grant works at the intersection of conflict, human rights, and governance in fragile, conflict-affected settings in the Middle East and Africa. As an international development professional and subject matter expert at NORC, her projects addressed diverse issues affecting vulnerable populations, from human rights, illicit trade, extremism, and organized crime to child labor and youth recruitment into violence. Audra has over 20 years of experience as a practitioner, security and policy professional and academic and has worked in nearly every country in the Middle East and North Africa and also in over 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, providing policy and program advice to the USG, private sector, and international donors. She held senior positions at RAND and was a career analyst at the U.S. Department of State / INR. A former assistant professor at University Al-Akhawayn, Ifrane, Morocco, she is a Senior Lecturer at The George Washington University. Audra is also an advisor for the Women’s Ambassador Foundation, Howard University, and reviewer for the Journal of Peace and Development and Contemporary Review of the Middle East. 

The Expert is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics and International Relations of the Middle East. 

Nazifa Haqpal is a former Afghan diplomat, journalist, and PhD candidate in Law at SOAS University of London. She has extensive expertise in human rights, Islamic and customary law, and gender issues, with a particular focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Her expertise is informed by her doctoral research and extensive experience preparing and assessing Country of Origin (COI) reports and documentation. She is also an Associate Member (Practising Category) of the Academy of Experts, specialising as a Country-of-Origin Expert.
 

Iranian Lawyer and PhD in Middle East international politics and law (Durham Univ) - with vast experience in producing expert reports on Iranian Law and the Judicial System; also available to comment on the authentication of legal and other official documents.

Independent international expert specialising in minority rights, women’s rights, and state violence in Iran, with over thirty years’ experience in research, documentation, and advocacy. Regularly instructed as an expert witness in asylum and immigration proceedings across the UK, EU, USA, and Canada. Recognised for impartial, evidence-based analysis of ethnic and religious minorities, Iranian legal frameworks, and risk on return, including state surveillance and political profiling. My work has informed domestic court determinations and contributed to reporting by UN Special Rapporteurs, international NGOs, and the European Parliament.