As I read about the latest in a string of attacks on Syrian field hospitals and medical staff – this time a car bomb that killed 14 people and wounded 70 in a Syrian town on the Turkish border – the classic and morbid U2 song, which memorializes violence against civilian protesters in Northern Ireland, echoed in my head. Now it’s another continent, decades later, but still we feel helpless in the face of such brutality against civilians who are merely trying to survive a protracted and catastrophic conflict. Fortunately, friends and colleagues of Physicians for Human Rights in the targeted area are safe – for now.

The Orient Foundation, which runs the hospital, has accused the Assad regime of deliberately targeting the facility and affirmed that its patients, doctors, and nurses were among the casualties.

PHR and other organizations are documenting the ongoing assault on Syria’s medical community, which is unprecedented in terms of its calculated cruelty against medical personnel. Since the war began in 2011, hospitals, field clinics, ambulances, and vehicles transporting medicine and medical supplies have been deliberately targeted by government and opposition forces. Medical personnel have been arrested, tortured, executed, and “disappeared.” These crimes against the principle of medical neutrality – which ensures safe access to medical facilities, protects health care workers and their patients, and allows medical workers to provide unbiased care – have compounded the suffering of civilians and hastened the devastation of an already fragile health care system.

The attack on Orient hospital has forced staff to rush patients to other facilities in Syria and Türkiye – facilities that also lack resources and are vulnerable to the same kinds of attacks. We have learned that medical colleagues in nearby hospitals are bracing for the worst as they prepare to receive more patients in hospitals lacking everything from personnel to medicine to stable electricity. Their commitment to their patients and to the Syrian people as a whole is iron-clad. They already work 24-hour shifts as shells whistle down and gunfire erupts around them. I wonder how they could possibly do more, work longer, and help additional patients in such devastating and dangerous circumstances, but I know they will. That is who they are. These are the doctors, nurses, and medical staff my colleagues and I are proud to work with and support.

This post originally appeared in The Huffington Post.

The hallmark image of V-Day is a victim of sexual violence rising from the horror and dehumanization of being targeted to the recovery and empowerment of being a survivor. As millions of people will witness the "risings" this week initiated by playwright and activist Eve Ensler and replicated in film, dance, and other events throughout the world, I want to pay tribute to the courageous experts behind the scenes who are critical to this movement.

These are the men and women with whom my colleagues and I work in Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Syria, and here in the United States. They are waging an uphill battle for justice in the face of enormous obstacles, and — because of them — the tide is turning.

These are doctors and nurses who stitch up torn bodies and help heal shattered spirits of those subjected to these heinous crimes; they are the police officers who overcome cultures of callous neglect, corruption, and intimidation to conduct investigations and support prosecutions; they are the lawyers and victims' advocates who are bringing landmark lawsuits to support victims of mass atrocities, including sexual violence, and help survivors obtain a measure of justice and reparation; and they are the judges who have the courage to exercise independence by ruling against influential people in their communities who abuse their power, including politicians and military commanders.

This V-Day, we have a new narrative — not only are survivors moving from silence to speaking out, but we are moving from cynicism about the role of courts to increasing legal successes in the most unimaginable locations. As more clinicians and police are trained to support survivors and collect evidence, more crimes will be prosecuted, more survivors will dare to demand their day in court, and we can end impunity for crimes of sexual violence.

In the DRC, hundreds of survivors have risen up to demand justice after yet another episode of mass sexual violence that occurred in Minova in November 2012 during the armed conflict on the Congo-Rwanda border. The legal process to hold the perpetrators accountable is now underway in the border town of Goma, and — despite the numerous challenges facing the prosecution and a dearth of evidence — these courageous women are looking to police, lawyers, victims' advocates, and human rights defenders to help them fight for justice. And, in what would have been unthinkable two years ago, the notorious Congolese warlord, Bosco Ntaganda, will now face trial on charges of engineering mass atrocities, including sexual violence, which were recently confirmed by the International Criminal Court.

In Kenya, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has teamed up with eight survivors and several Kenyan organizations to hold the government accountable for failing to protect civilians from sexual violence during the 2007-2008 election violence. The survivors we are working with are asking their government to publicly acknowledge the state's responsibility to protect them from violence, and — when they fail — to provide them with access to medical treatment and justice. Failing to support survivors of sexual violence in these basic ways is not only a miscarriage of justice, but also represents the abandonment of those individuals who bravely report these crimes.

I am regularly inspired by those medical and legal professionals who take great personal risk, along with survivors, to advance these cases despite limited resources and little support from the state. These stories demonstrate how people are seeking to develop precedents in order to move these cases forward. It is their determination that will secure justice in the end.

PHR has been supporting collaborative networks of doctors, nurses, police, lawyers, and judges in East and Central Africa and the Middle East, where we train these key people on the best methods for collecting, analyzing, and preserving evidence of sexual violence to support local prosecutions and hold the perpetrators to account. When survivors come forward to seek justice, we must defend these front-line responders so that the legal processes can be improved and courts can deliver justice. It's hardly a big ask of any of us.

As we form a larger and louder global alliance with survivors who are demanding justice, let us reflect on the African proverb: "A single bracelet does not jingle." On this V-Day, let's make some noise.

Words fail to convey the horror and suffering Syrians are enduring on a daily basis: 9 million people, approaching half of Syria’s pre-war population, have fled their homes. 6.5 million are internally displaced. 37 percent of hospitals have been totally destroyed. 2 million children have been forced out of school. At least 110,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

As the world unites to celebrate the spirit of the Olympic Games, PHR and 36 other organizations call on all members of the Security Council to support a binding resolution demanding all parties to the conflict guarantee safe, full and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance to populations in need in all areas of Syria.

The full statement can be read here.

As the Olympic Games begin in Sochi, 47 signatories, including PHR board member, Justice Richard J. Goldstone, call on President Vladimir Putin of Russia to lead efforts to agree on a UN Security Council humanitarian resolution that calls for Syria’s parties to the conflict to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance and open Syria’s conflict lines and borders to ensure aid reaches all those in need, including through local ceasefires.

The Olympic Games are intended to uphold the goals of peaceful coexistence, fair play, and a worldwide truce called for the duration of the Games. The world is blighted by conflict, but nowhere is the stark contrast with the spirit of the Games so apparent as in Syria. Russian leadership can deliver an Olympic opening that will make an immediate and dramatic difference to millions of innocent people in desperate need.

The full statement can be read here.

Earlier this month, Mexico’s congress passed a resolution encouraging U.S. authorities to grant asylum to Mexican citizens fleeing the savage violence that has plagued the country over the last several years. The resolution signifies an acknowledgement that the Mexican government is incapable of protecting its own citizens and is understood to be the first time lawmakers of any country have formally asked the U.S. government for assistance in providing safe haven for its citizens.

Despite an increase in awareness regarding the scale and brutality of the violence in Mexico, asylum claims are denied at an astounding rate. More than 9,000 Mexicans applied for asylum in 2012, and only 126 were accepted – less than 2 percent.

The majority of Mexican asylum applicants are individuals fleeing violence perpetrated by members of organized criminal cartels and do not fall neatly into one of the five protected grounds (race, religion, nationality, political opinion, and membership in a particular social group). Yet the complicity of municipal, state, and federal police with the cartels makes these applicants eligible for political asylum because the government has ultimately failed to protect them, and – in some cases – has actively persecuted them.

Still, adjudicators in the United States do not properly recognize the inextricable link between the cartels and the agents of the Mexican state. In addition, because Mexico is a neighboring country, U.S. immigration authorities deny their asylum claims at a higher rate due to a fear that the “floodgates” will open and we will be inundated with Mexican applicants.

The resolution was authored and introduced by Senator Maria de Guadalupe Calderon, the sister of former President of Mexico Felipe Calderon. The senator represents the southwestern state of Michoacán, an area where instability is at an all-time high as armed “self-defense” groups are fighting back against the extortion, rape, kidnappings, and executions perpetrated by the state’s dominant cartel, the Knights Templar.

The resolution specifically mentioned last year’s “Pedaling for Justice” bike ride by Carlos Gutierrez, a businessman from the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua whose feet were cut off by drug traffickers after he failed to meet their extortion demands. Using two prosthetic legs, Gutierrez rode 700 miles rom El Paso to Austin to bring awareness to the widespread violence in his home country.

In addition to the implications the resolution may have on Mexican asylum claims, it may also stimulate U.S. lawmakers to reconsider the Mérida Initiative – a 2008 aid package from the United States to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean estimated at $1.5 billion. The Mérida Initiative requires that Mexico address human rights violations and fight corruption within law enforcement agencies.

It remains to be seen what effect the resolution will have on the U.S. government’s handling of Mexican asylum applications going forward. As a next step, advocates are encouraging lawmakers to hold binational congressional hearings to examine violence in Mexico and the asylum process in the United States. Such hearings would be a much-needed first step for the United States to address the realities of drug war violence it has so long ignored.

On the 5th anniversary of President Barack Obama’s signing of the executive order to close the detention facility at Guantánamo and to standardize use of the Army Field Manual for interrogations, PHR and partner organizations sent a letter to the president. PHR and partner human rights organizations called on President Obama to publicly support the declassification and release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report and to bring the truth about torture to the American people. The full letter can be found here.