PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS INC
256 WEST 38TH STREET FL 9, NEW YORK, NY 10018 physiciansforhumanrights.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WORKS AT THE INTERSECTION OF MEDICINE, SCIENCE, AND LAW TO SECURE HUMAN RIGHTS AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. WE INVESTIGATE AND DOCUMENT HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, GIVE VOICE TO SURVIVORS AND WITNESSES, AND PLANT SEEDS OF RECONCILIATION BY ENSURING THAT PERPETRATORS CAN BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR CRIMES.

Physicians for Human Rights works at the intersection of medicine, science, and law to secure justice and universal human rights for all.

Sexual Violence/Rape as a Weapon of War Rape is a part of life for all too many women, men, girls, and boys in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where post-election violence and impunity, and decades of conflict, respectively, have made sexual violence virtually endemic. Health professionals in these countries are often the first to respond to rape survivors, but many have little training in the forensic collection and documentation of evidence. As a result, many cases of sexual violence are not pursued or result in acquittals for lack of evidence. PHRs Program on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones was created to change that. We understand that survivors have the best chance at justice when all sectors collaborate to prosecute cases of rape and other sexual violence, and PHRs special contribution stems from our unique cross-sectoral approach: we train professionals from the medical, law enforcement, legal, and judicial sectors to work together to collect, document, protect, and interpret evidence of sexual violence. To date, PHRs experts and our colleagues in Kenya and the DRC have trained more than 1,000 doctors, nurses, police officers, lawyers, and judges to use forensic science to hold perpetrators of sexual violence to account and to bring justice to survivors. PHR has introduced two important innovations which are transforming the fight against sexual violence: a standardized medical form to help doctors and nurses throughout the DRC to thoroughly and accurately document court-admissible evidence of sexual violence; and MediCapt, an award-winning mobile application that empowers the medical, legal, and law enforcement professionals we train to securely store and safely share that forensic evidence for use in justice settings. MediCapt allows doctors and nurses examining survivors of sexual violence to directly input onto a mobile device standard medical information, take photographs of survivors injuries, and upload records to secure servers. This process overcomes some of the entrenched problems of bringing sexual violence cases to trial: clinicians submitting incomplete or unintelligible reports, evidence being lost, stolen, or tampered with, clinicians and police being targeted by perpetrators who want to suppress evidence even the absence of paper and pencils to document evidence, or of vehicles and roads to deliver files to police stations. Ultimately, we hope to make MediCapt an open-access tool available to clinicians globally for documentation purposes.

Research and Investigations: Syria Health facilities and personnel have been open targets during the nine-year Syrian conflict, in flagrant violation of international norms that protect medical care in times of war. PHRs Syria mapping project has meticulously documented the killing of medical workers and the destruction of medical facilities in Syria since the start of the conflict, the vast majority by government forces and their Russian allies. Between March 2011 and March 2020, PHR has documented 595 attacks on nearly 350 health facilities, and the killing of 923 medical personnel. The evidence of intentionality is clear: many of the health facilities that were attacked were struck at least twice. Some were attacked five times or more. As Syrias conflict ground on in 2019-2020, Physicians for Human Rights repeatedly called upon our extensive expertise and networks on the ground to document and speak out about the devastating consequences of the fighting. With our report "My Only Crime Was that I Was a Doctor," we showed how the Syrian government arrested, detained and tortured health workers for fulfilling their duties in accordance with medical ethics, effectively criminalizing health care. In that report, PHR revealed another facet of the Syria governments policy to instrumentalize health care for political and military ends. When the Syrian government and its allies launched their campaign to recapture Syrias northwest from rebel groups, PHR documented the renewed targeting and destruction of health facilities and the denial of vital services to millions of Syrians. PHRs highly respected data which is shared with independent reporting and accountability mechanisms, and widely used by decision-makers and by the media will one day help frame the prosecution of these crimes against humanity.

Building Forensic Capacity in Iraq In the summer of 2014, a reign of terror descended on Northern Iraq as ISIS fighters overran the district of Sinjar and surrounding villages, massacring men from the Yazidi ethnic minority and kidnapping thousands of women and girls into sexual slavery. Girls as young as eight years old were bought and sold, some repeatedly, and subjected to harrowing torture and sexual violence. Though many captives have escaped or been freed, some 3,000 Yazidis are still missing. The UN Secretary-general has appointed an investigative team to support domestic efforts to hold ISIS accountable for the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed in Iraq. It is equally important to build consensus about addressing all human rights violations, including torture, particularly the widespread practice of torturing detainees in prisons and detention settings in order to extract confessions. To help secure justice for survivors and witnesses of these atrocities, PHR is spearheading an effort to train local medical, legal, and justice professionals on how to produce medical-legal documentation of torture and sexual violence based on international norms. The goal of PHRs project is to strengthen accountability for human rights crimes as a crucial element of transitional justice in Iraq using forensic techniques and to support victims quest for justice and reparations. To accomplish this goal, PHR will pursue these objectives: 1) Promote accountability by bringing together and building capacity among medical, law enforcement, legal, and judicial professionals from the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Iraqi central government and civil society to collect, analyze, and preserve medical-legal evidence for use in investigations and prosecutions of sexual violence cases; and 2) Ensure that witnesses and victims of torture, including sexual violence, are able to access high quality medical-legal evaluations and that those who conduct the evaluations and subsequently use the evidence are trained to work with victims in a manner that is respectful, competent, and minimizes re-traumatization. This work is part of an overall effort to support the collection of evidence of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.

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