Daily News Sri Lanka 4 August 2010 – CORI Report Outdated and No Basis for Guidelines
The country report on Sri Lanka produced by UK based research organization Country of Origin Research and Information (CORI) in April this year is outdated and should not be used as a basis for designing the guidelines for determining the status of Sri Lankan refugees, UNHCR Colombo Head has informed UNHCR headquarters in Geneva.
This was revealed when the reply of External Affairs Minister to a question asked by Rajiva Wijesinha MP on the CORI Report was tabled in Parliament yesterday. The report was a sequel to CORI being commissioned by the UNHCR to produce a report on Sri Lanka. The Country Representative of the UNHCR has also informed the Government that such reports are not, and do not purport to be, either exhaustive with regard to conditions in the country surveyed, or conclusive as to the merits of any particular claim to refugee status of asylum.
The external Affairs Minister has also said that ‘no officials of CORI visited Sri Lanka to conduct research for the report.
Rajiva Wijesinha 