For Immediate Release
Susannah Sirkin, Deputy Director of PHR, was honoredby Tufts University’s Institute for Global Leadership with the Dr. Jean MayerGlobal Citizenship Award.
Sirkin was presented with the awardat the Tuft’s EPIIC (Education for Public Inquiry and InternationalCitizenship) Symposium, held February 22-26 at TuftsUniversity, where she was a featured speaker on Friday evening’s paneldiscussing global response to mass atrocities.
Sirkin has held her position with PHR sincethe organization’s founding 25 years ago, and has organized investigations intohuman rights violations in dozens of countries, from Afghanistan to Sudan. Shehas worked extensively on studies of sexual violence in war zones, and hasedited numerous reports and articles on the medical consequences of humanrights violations, physical evidence of human rights abuses, and physiciancomplicity in violations. She also served as PHR’s representative to theInternational Campaign to Ban Landmines, for which the organization shared inthe 1997 Nobel Prize for Peace.
Sirkin is currently focused on ending rape in war through PHR’snew program which is training legal and medical practitioners (doctors, nurses,social workers, lawyers, judges, police officers) in the proper forensicdocumentation of sexual assault in order to help prosecute cases of sexualviolence in East and Central Africa.
The Dr. Jean Mayer Global CitizenshipAward was established by the Institute for Global Leadership in 1993 to honorthe work and life of Dr. Jean Mayer, President and Chancellor of TuftsUniversity from 1976-93, and it is given annually to individuals who havededicated themselves to solving the most pressing problems facing the world.Past recipients have included Amartya Sen, Paul Farmer, and Desmond Tutu.
To learn more about the symposium,please visit the EPIIC website.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. Learn more here.