Care in the Crosshairs: Violence Against Health Care in Conflict in 2025, released today by the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC), documents 2,546 incidents of violence against or obstruction of health care across 33 countries in 2025, including 790 incidents where hospitals were damaged or destroyed and 455 health workers killed. International humanitarian law […]
As Ethiopia prepares to hold parliamentary and regional elections on Monday, June 1, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH) warned that the vote is taking place amid growing instability, escalating repression, and ongoing humanitarian and human rights crises across the country. Drone strikes and attacks against civilian infrastructure in Amhara, reports of a health system near collapse due to a […]
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) submission to the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for the Draft General Comment on the Application of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Situations of Armed Conflict (May 2026)
May 29, 2026
Attacks on Health Care, Children's Rights, Reproductive Justice, Sexual Violence
(Statement available in English here) Des coupes massives américaines dans les programmes de santé mondiaux essentiels, notamment des coupes de financement et de personnel aux Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), le démantèlement de l’Agence américaine pour le développement international (USAID) et le retrait des États-Unis de l’Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS), ont dangereusement affaibli la capacité […]
In response to the Trump administration invoking Title 42 authorities to block access to the U.S. asylum system following the Ebola outbreak, the following quote is attributable to Thomas McHale, SM, public health director at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR): “The Trump administration’s revival of Title 42 in response to the Ebola outbreak in the […]
(Déclaration disponible en français ici) Sweeping U.S. cuts to critical global health programs, including funding and staffing reductions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), have dangerously weakened the world’s ability to respond […]
U.S. law enforcement agencies increasingly deployed three crowd-control weapons in dangerous ways to crack down on immigration protests over the past year, according to a new visual investigation by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). The PHR visual investigation spotlights these three weapons (scattershot impact projectiles, Muzzle Blast rounds, and chemical obscurants), unpacks their health hazards, […]
Drawing on four decades of research on the health and human rights harms of CCWs, a team of PHR experts have documented injuries from these weapons and identified the prominent role certain lesser-known CCWs have played in policing U.S. protests throughout 2025 and 2026.
On Tuesday, Denny Adan Gonzalez, a Cuban man detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, died from apparent suicide, according to an ICE news release and earlier reporting by immigration researcher Andrew Free – the latest in a surge of deaths inside U.S. immigration detention facilities. […]
Ten years after the UNSC passed Resolution 2286 and committed to protect health care in conflict zones, combatants have attacked health care at least 18,000 times around the world – with attack totals on the rise each year. On this decade anniversary, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) calls on the UN Secretary-General and UN Member […]
