CAPE methods and ethics

The CAPE database serves as a place of the collation and analysis of data — a one-stop shop to learn about political exiles and, more importantly, the patterns of extra-territorial security to which they are subject. The database is reviewed and updated on a regular basis according to principles of method and ethics. The updates include some changes in the data published for previous years, consequently the database is adjusted accordingly. The material in the database is extracted from events being reported in news media and official policy and judicial reports, published either in Russian or English. In other words, the database only includes information already made public.

The following sources were used systematically to build the database:

  1. European Court of Human Rights – check by country in the collection of 3600+ ‘Grand Chamber’ judgements,
  2. UN Human Rights – check by country/name,
  3. Human Rights Watch – check by country,
  4. Amnesty International Urgent Actions – check by country,
  5. Interpol Red Notices – check by name,
  6. Eurasianet (news),
  7. Fair Trials International,
  8. Association for Human Rights in Central Asia,
  9. Norwegian Helsinki Committee ,
  10. Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty,
  11. US State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor,
  12. Google/Bing search by name to pick up general press sources — checks are also made on alternate spellings of names.

Our reliance on public sources means that the database is inherently limited and can make no necessary claim to be infallible. Academics and analysts using the database should therefore consider that, as a tip of the iceberg, it may not be representative of the whole.

Ethics

Given our choice, on ethical grounds, to include only public data in the database we have not requested permission from the persons named in the data. However, if any individual would like their entry removed from our database they may contact us to request such alterations.

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