On this page, you will find:
To find organisations working for LGBTQI+ rights, visit our Libya LGBTQI+ Resources page.
To find organisations providing legal or other types of assistance to refugees in Libya, visit our Libya 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: 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 the 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.
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: hughmiles@alshafiemiles.com
Hugh Miles has acted as an expert witness and authenticated Arabic language documents in more than 150 asylum cases in the UK, Europe and N America. He lives in Cairo.
Hugh is the director of Al Shafie Miles, a business intelligence consultancy specialising in the Middle East and North Africa. Drawing on a network of highly experienced former UK foreign office officials and other experts, Al Shafie Miles helps its clients develop their strategic and commercial interests in the Arab world. ( www.alshafiemiles.com ). Further, he is the founder of Arab Digest, a private members club offering expert commentary and analysis on the Middle East and North Africa. Arab Digest has around 450 elite members worldwide, including decision-makers in business and politics, people in the British FCO and other foreign ministries, as well as others in the media, the academic world, energy industry etc. Business subscribers who find Arab Digest useful include blue-chip names such as Barclays, HSBC, BP, Chevron and BAE. ( www.ArabDigest.org )
Hugh is a freelance investigative journalist specialising in the Middle East and North Africa. He has worked with a wide variety of international media including the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, CNBC, Economist, New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, London Review of Books, Mirror, Express, Sun, and others. His journalism has appeared on the front pages of the Guardian, Telegraph, Independent and New York Times newspapers and he has written, produced and presented radio and TV programmes for the BBC and Al Jazeera English. ( www.hughmiles.com ). He is the author of two books, ‘Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World’ (published Jan 2005) and ‘Playing Cards in Cairo’ (April 2008). He has contributed to several other publications. Since 2005 Hugh has been a Contributing Editor of the American University in Cairo’s media journal.
Email: cherstich@googlemail.com
Dr Cherstich has provided expert information about Libyan affairs for Universities (University of Leiden – Van Vollenhoven Institute), Press Agencies (Agence France Press- AFP), Organisations (Human Rights Watch), Newspapers (Corriere della Sera), Radio (Radio Svizzera), and Television (ABC Australia, Channel Four) He has also authored a series of expert reports dealing with Libyan asylum seekers. He is fluent in Arabic.
Email: jmundy@colgate.edu
Dr Jacob Mundy (PhD, University of Exeter 2010) is an Associate Professor in the Peace and Conflict Studies and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Colgate University. He has written asylum support letters for clients in the United States and the United Kingdom coming from Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, and Libya. During the 2018–2019 academic year, serving as a Fulbright Scholar, he was a visiting professor with the International Political Economy program at the Tunis Business School, part of the Université de Tunis. His research examines foreign involvement in armed conflicts in Northwest Africa. He has conducted field- and archival work in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Western Sahara. He is willing to discuss writing support letters or reports for cases involving (1) the political persecution of Sahrawis (Western Saharans) and Imazighen/Berbers (Morocco and Algeria); (2) victims of terrorism and state persecution related to the civil conflict in 1990s Algeria; and (3) persons affected by the civil conflict in Libya since 2011.
Email: martin_jerrett@yahoo.com
In 2011, Mr Jerrett worked in Libya and wrote regular analysis for the UK risk mitigation company on Libyan security affairs. Between 2008 and 2011, he wrote reports on community/tribal dynamics in Libya for the IOC. He worked on conflict analysis for SaferWorld. He wrote tribal mappings for Libya. In 2011, he headed the IOM operations in Libya as part of the UN country team. Mr Jerrett speaks Arabic and has also done extensive work in Yemen and Iraq.
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: RLobban@ric.edu
Tel: +1 401 46 72 857, 603-744-6484
Dr Richard A Lobban is an anthropologist and early pioneer in social network modelling, archaeologist, Egyptologist, and Sudanist, foreign policy expert, human rights activist. He is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and African Studies at Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island since 1972; also a lecturer at the Archaeological Institute of America and the Naval War College. He is an expert in Ancient Sudan and Ancient Egypt, with a particular focus on Nubia. Lobban has authored numerous books and publications such as the Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia, Historical Dictionary of Sudan (2002), and Social Networks in Urban Sudan (1973). He has also authored/co-authored books such as Historical dictionary of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau (1997), Cape Verde: Crioulo colony to independent nation (1995), Historical dictionary of Cape Verde (2007), and Middle Eastern women and the invisible economy (1998).
Email: rbstjohn@comcast.net
Dr Ronald Bruce St John graduated from Knox College with a B.A. in political science and the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver, with an M.A. and PhD in international relations. Dr. St John was an affiliate professor at the Institute of International Studies, Bradley University, in 1982-2006, lecturing on Middle East politics. He participated in 1999-2001 in the Proyecto Trinacional, a trilateral project (Bolivia, Chile, Peru) promoting economic development in the Atacama Desert. He was actively engaged in 2002 in the Palestinian Authority’s Land Corridor Project, sponsored by The Adam Smith Institute in London. He has been a frequent guest lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy of Peru since 1999. He has served as a consultant for a variety of Fortune 500 companies, US government agencies, National Geographic Magazine, World Book Encyclopedia, the Associated Press, Washington Post, and The New York Times. He also served on the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Libyan Studies and The Atlantic Council Working Group on Libya. Finally, he has acted as a consultant in asylum and criminal cases involving Libyan nationals in Canada, Norway, and the United States. Dr. St John has published 25 books and monographs and contributed to 34 others with a three-fold focus on Andean America, North Africa & the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
Email: gabbay@muslimworldexpert.com
Dr Shaul Gabbay acts as a resource for immigration attorneys seeking advice, counsel and expert testimony in asylum cases. Formerly the Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Israel in the Middle East at the University of Denver, he has published extensively on cultures and customs in all Muslim countries, persecution issues based on family dishonor, gender and homosexuality, and sociology and politics of the Muslim world. Professor Gabbay’s expertise helps immigration attorneys and judges understand key societal issues and trends in the Muslim world that have life-threatening repercussions for Muslim immigrants throughout the U.S. at risk of deportation. His oral testimony and written analysis draws on his extensive knowledge and examination of cultural practices in Muslim countries as well as his life experience growing up in the Middle East. More information is on his website www.muslimworldexpert.com.
COI Resources
The following sections contain documents that can be consulted when looking for country of origin information.
This report was prepared on the basis of the questions and points of focus in the Terms of Reference (ToR) drawn up by the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security. The ToR for this report was defined on 29 September 2022. It is available, together
with the report, on the website of the Dutch Government. This general country of origin information report describes the situation in Libya insofar as it is relevant for the assessment of asylum applications by persons originating from that country and for the decision-making process regarding the return of rejected Libyan asylum-seekers. The report is an update of the general
country of origin information report for Libya of September 2021. It covers the period from October 2021 to January 2023. Developments of relevance for answering the questions asked in the ToR have been taken into account in outline up
to the date of publication. The report is a factual, neutral and objective representation of the findings that were made during the period under consideration. It is not a policy document and does not reflect the government’s vision or policy in
relation to a country or region. It does not contain any conclusions concerning immigration policy.
IOM has been operating in Libya since 2006 and continues to maintain a strong presence in the country, with staff working from two offices in Tripoli, one sub-office in Benghazi and field offices in Gatroun, Zwara, Bani Waleed and Sabha with projects implemented in the south, east and west of Libya. IOM implements a wide range of programmes to address urgent humanitarian needs of affected populations, as well as programmes to strengthen resilience and enhance the capacity of the country to address root causes
of instability
This report seeks to analyse key human rights risks and protection gaps faced by migrants in Libya in the context
of assisted return and reintegration. It is part of a wider effort by OHCHR in seeking to identify, document and
analyse human rights violations and protection gaps impacting migrants in Libya and the neighbouring region
and to formulate recommendations to relevant governments and other stakeholders aimed at ensuring compliance
with international human rights law and standards.
Libya Legal Assistance
Find organisations offering legal and other types of assistance to refugees in Libya.
Libya LGBTQI+ Resources
Find organisations working for refugee LGBTQI+ rights in Libya.
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