In countries worldwide, perpetrators of torture and mass atrocities regularly escape responsibility for their crimes – usually for lack of evidence.
Physicians for Human Rights uses our unique focus on forensic science, public health, and medicine to change that.
We empower front line human rights defenders around the world – including clinicians, nurses, psychologists, lawyers, police officers, and judges – to collect, analyze, preserve, and use credible evidence to expose and stop human rights abuses.
We enable our partners to hone their skills in interviewing techniques, physical examination, proper evidence collection, crime scene documentation, forensic photography, and grave exhumation.
We connect all the players in the “chain of justice” – the clinicians who first examine survivors, the police who investigate the crime, the lawyers who construct the legal case, and the judges who try it – so they can work together to better prosecute human rights violations.
Truth-telling, healing, reparations, and justice are often elusive for survivors of human rights abuses. But when evidence is properly collected, analyzed, and preserved, there is a much greater chance of achieving justice and prompting change.
