Country of origin evidence you can defend.
Provenance helps asylum decision-makers assemble, weigh and cite country-of-origin information. It shows why every source was retrieved and how it is weighted, keeps a record of every query — and leaves the judgment to you.
What it does
Research support, built to be examined
Searches the sources that count
Curated COI databases, Government, UN, NGO and news reporting, all searched. Place-name variants and related terms are proposed and confirmed before anything runs, so material filed under a different spelling or a different word isn't missed.
Works with or without a claimant
Not every search is about an individual. A country or background enquiry runs the same way and keeps the same record, with no claimant profile involved at all.
Shows why each source appeared
Every result carries a short quotation from the document itself, marking which term matched — and whether it was the phrase you searched or a broader one you agreed to. The words come from the source, they are not ours.
Weighs reliability across separate axes
Independence, transparency, first-hand evidence, how current it is, geographic coverage, the publisher's remit and standing, and any declared lean — eight axes, shown side by side and never combined into one number. A single score would hide exactly what makes a ranking arguable.
Counts corroboration honestly
Social media sources can be included here. Sources reporting the same claim are grouped, and any likely reposts of a single original are flagged rather than counted again. Ten copies of one report are one account, not ten.
Keeps quotations against your own issues
The sources you rely on and what you rely on them for are different judgments, and are recorded separately. Quotations are kept under the issues you typed yourself — never against a legal test, because deciding what a fact proves is the judgment that stays with you. Each one records where in the document it came from, so it can be found in the original and checked rather than taken on trust.
Keeps the record
Every query, the terms and place names confirmed, and the results as shown are written to an append-only record — so the search behind a submission can be reproduced and inspected later.
Keeps personal data apart
Claimant details are held separately from the query record and can be erased on their own schedule, without breaking the audit trail. Only a minimal profile is used in the search.
Holds no case reference of yours
Provenance issues its own short code for a case; your file number is never stored here, so the link between the two exists only in your records. The code is built to be written down and typed back — it leaves out the letters people misread, and a mistyped character is refused rather than becoming a search for a case that does not exist.
Built to be hosted in-country
The stack is open source and containerised, and the first deployment target is South Africa. Where the data sits is a deployment choice rather than something baked into the product, so a jurisdiction that requires its evidence to stay inside its borders can be met without a rebuild.
What it does not do
The limits are the point
- It does not decide cases. Provenance retrieves and ranks source material. It draws no conclusion about a claim, and makes no recommendation about an outcome.
- It does not replace reading the source. Every result links to the original, and the quotations are deliberately short. They are there to help you judge relevance, not to stand in for the document.
- It does not hide its reasoning. Rankings are explained by their inputs rather than asserted. If you disagree with one, you can see precisely what produced it.
- It does not decide independence for you. Where sources may not be independent of one another, that is flagged for review — never quietly resolved.
Status
In development
Provenance is being built now. The audit record, the case and query service, retrieval, and the reviewing workspace are working — running a search, confirming the terms it proposes, reading a source and keeping quotations against issues. Source partnerships are still being negotiated, and flagging where two reports contradict each other is the next piece of work.
We are talking to legal-aid practitioners and refugee-status decision-making bodies about pilots. If you assemble country-of-origin evidence and would be willing to tell us what actually slows you down, we would like to hear from you.
Last updated September 2026