The United Nations Human Rights Council’s 52nd session in Geneva concluded this week with some meaningful advances for health and human rights. In addition to the adoption of the landmark resolution on the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment (A/HRC/51/L.7), the Human Rights Council (HRC) also renewed the mandates for several important […]
PHR delivered strong statements to world leaders to stop illegal attacks on health care in places such as Myanmar, Syria, and Ukraine, and demand accountability for human rights abuses.
October 5, 2022
Attacks on Health Care, Mass Atrocities, Persecution of Health Workers, Rohingya
This article was originally published by The New Humanitarian, a news agency specialised in reporting humanitarian crises. Many Syrians are experiencing heart-wrenching flashbacks as we watch the mounting devastation in Ukraine and the millions of refugees fleeing. As a Syrian physician who provided medical care amid the war in my country, it’s especially painful when […]
Syria remains one of the world’s most complex humanitarian emergencies. Ten years of violence have resulted in more than 500,000 casualties, triggered one of the worst displacement crises of our time, and led to the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure. Homes, schools, and health facilities have not been spared, and people have been deprived of […]
July 8, 2021
Attacks on Health Care, Persecution of Health Workers
An enormous humanitarian crisis may face the four million people in Syria’s northwest region, specifically the Idlib governorate, which currently relies on one lifeline to outside aid: the Bab al-Hawa border crossing from Turkey. In the months leading up to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 and early 2020, Idlib faced heavy […]
Originally published by Al Jazeera, March 19, 2021 Every day when I wake up, I think about August 18, 2012 – the day I finally saw the sun after weeks in captivity. For the “crime” of providing healthcare to injured protesters, the Syrian government imprisoned and tortured me at the Military Intelligence Directorate in Aleppo for […]
March 23, 2021
Attacks on Health Care, Mass Atrocities, Persecution of Health Workers, Torture
March is Women’s History Month: 31 days to celebrate the contributions of women throughout the ages. Unfortunately, the stories of too many influential women have been lost to time. In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8 and Women’s History Month, PHR is profiling extraordinary women who have made an impact in the movement […]
Nine months into the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Syria’s public health conditions continue to worsen by the day. The Syrian government has been heavily criticized for its inadequate response to the spread of the disease and for suppressing information regarding the COVID-19 infection rate. After President Bashar al-Assad’s nine-year targeted assault on medical workers […]
The COVID-19 pandemic has left no community unscathed. In some countries, health workers face personal protective equipment shortages; in others, governments actively exploit the pandemic to restrict rights to freedom of speech or assembly and suppress access to information about COVID-19. But even in this challenging context, the pursuit of justice for some of the […]
COVID -19 has kept many other outrages out of sight – and, for some governments, probably the hope that those outrages might be forgotten entirely. The Syrian government is one that might have been banking on some amnesia as far as chemical weapons use is concerned. It will be disappointed, likely infuriated, that the Organisation […]
