Dear Friends and Colleagues,
The Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS) is launching a new project—a searchable database of qualified and pre-vetted country specialists and health professionals who serve as expert witnesses to support asylum seekers in the United States. This service will be offered to attorneys and experts alike, free of charge. In other areas of the law, the provision of expert witness referrals is highly developed and professionalized, but this will be the first project of its kind to do so in the asylum field. As many of you know, for nearly twenty years, CGRS has been providing expert referrals through our technical assistance program. We are thrilled to be creating this new resource that will greatly improve our ability to support your cases.
The Asylum Expert Witness Database is scheduled to go live in late 2017 and will contain detailed profiles for hundreds of experts, as well as information, including outcomes, about cases for which they have provided testimony. When available, we will also include sample transcripts of the expert’s prior testimony and any government challenges to an expert’s qualifications. Experts will be able to update their own profiles to include information about current availability and fee requirements. In the meantime, we will continue to provide referrals when requested through our website http://cgrs.uchastings.edu/assistance.
We are currently seeking information from attorneys about recommended country specialists or health professionals for inclusion in the database. Please send information about any recommended experts, including contact information, areas of expertise, and CVs, to CGRS at CGRS-ExpertDB@uchastings.edu. We will follow up with attorneys and the experts themselves as we get closer to the go-live date.
For more information, please contact CGRS Staff Attorney Robyn Barnard at BarnardRobyn@uchastings.edu.
Thank you in advance for your assistance in this endeavor. We hope that the Asylum Expert Witness Database will further enhance the representation and resources provided to asylum seekers across the country.
The CGRS Team
Center for Gender and Refugee Studies
UC Hastings College of the Law
200 McAllister Street | San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 565-4877 (Phone) | (415) 581-8824 (Fax)
cgrs@uchastings.edu