PHR has conducted assessments and documentation of mass crimes around the world including state and military violence in Myanmar, attacks on health in Syria, mass graves in Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein’s brutal campaign against the Kurds in Iraq. These forensic assessments have produced critical evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
PHR teams of experts have documented apparent crimes against humanity committed in 2017 against Myanmar’s Rohingya population. Previous PHR research in Myanmar’s Chin, Kachin, and Karen states revealed extraordinary levels of state and military violence against civilian populations. The abuses included forced labor, religious persecution, beatings, killing, disappearances, torture, rape, and widespread pillaging.
Since 2012, PHR has maintained a digital map documenting attacks on health in Syria, including instances of indiscriminate or targeted bombing or firing on medical facilities and arrest, torture, injury and killing of health personnel.
PHR investigators discovered and conducted an initial assessment of a mass grave in northern Afghanistan in 2002 where as many as 2,000 surrendered Taliban and others are believed to have been suffocated in trucks by Afghan forces under the control of Afghan warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum. PHR has repeatedly called for a full investigation and accountability related to the Dasht-e-Leili site, including the role of US forces allied with Dostum’s forces.
