PHR works to reform policies, practices, and laws that directly violate human rights standards or undermine human rights protections.
We use the authoritative voices of medical professionals and the fact-based disciplines of science, forensics, and public health to advocate for an end to human rights abuses.
We defend our medical colleagues when they come under attack for carrying out their ethical obligation to treat all patients regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or political affiliation.
Our activism has freed doctors from imprisonment and ended harassment of medical professionals in dozens of countries. But we also call out medical professionals when they violate medical ethics or are complicit in state-sponsored torture and ill-treatment.
PHR advocates for a world where all people live in dignity, free from fear and free from want.
“We are the witnesses. And we have two choices: we can decide to stay quiet, and then we become complicit with those who commit these acts. The second choice is to speak up … and to say what we see, to bear witness … and to demand that it stop.”
Dr. Denis Mukwege, PHR partner and director of Panzi Hospital, Democratic Republic of the Congo
