CASES BY REGION

Each case the CHR undertakes is carefully investigated, using a variety of sources, before being taken up by the committee. These individuals cannot have been known to use or advocate violence.

The CHR's public and resolved cases are listed here. Most of the committee’s current cases are kept private and are only accessible to members of the NAS, NAE, and IOM through its private website. CHR's casework (usually several dozen cases at a time of unjustly detained or imprisoned scientists, engineers, and health professionals) includes contact with the prisoners’ families and lawyers, reaching out to academics and national science academies for insights and assistance, and tracking down independent and trustworthy sources of information on the prisoners themselves. It then makes inquiries of governments holding the prisoners about the facts of the case and, once direct or indirect contact is established, it undertakes a wide variety of tactics, believed to perhaps be particularly effective in a given situation, to gain a prisoner’s release. Periodically, the CHR undertakes missions of inquiry to selected countries and occasionally it decides that the only action left is that of making a strong public statement in the hope of shaming a government into releasing a prisoner. Prior to taking such action, the CHR must seek the approval of officers of the NAS, NAE, and IOM.