Consultancy: End-Term Evaluation of the Grand Challenges Canada (GCC)-Funded Project on MediCapt Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which shared in the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, is a U.S.-based international advocacy organization working at the intersection of medicine, science, and law. With a global network of thousands of medical, scientific, and legal experts, PHR uses […]

Kimberly Saltz is a Legal Fellow at Physicians for Human Rights. She uses legal advocacy to reform policies, practices, and laws that undermine and violate human rights standards. Prior to joining PHR, she was a member of the Justice in Public Safety Project at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where she worked on policy and […]

As leaders from Africa’s Great Lakes region and around the world meet in Paris this week to address the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) warns of an escalating humanitarian and health crisis, including immense violence, mass displacement, infectious disease, and acute malnutrition.   Conflict related sexual violence is also surging in the region, with more than 11,000 new cases of sexual violence […]

On 11 September 2025, survivors of post-election sexual violence (PESV) and civil society organizations filed a partial appeal to the Supreme Court of Kenya. The appeal challenges the Court of Appeal’s 8 August 2025 judgment in Civil Appeal E645 of 2021, which acknowledged the State’s constitutional and international obligation to protect citizens from sexual and gender-based […]

Senior Accountant (Sr. Accounting Coordinator) Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which shared in the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, is a U.S.-based international advocacy organization working at the intersection of medicine, science, and law. With a global network of thousands of medical, scientific, and legal experts, PHR uses the power of medical and scientific evidence […]

Webinar: The Ripple Effects of Abortion Bans Across Medical Specialties Moderated by Alice Miranda Ollstein, senior health care reporter for POLITICO. Panelists: Recorded on September 30, 2025. Explore PHR’s new research documenting how abortion bans are limiting clinicians’ ability to provide care across a wide range of specialties in the United States.

U.S. state abortion bans are disrupting medical care across many fields of medicine and resulting in substandard, discriminatory health care, according to a Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) research brief published today. PHR calls on federal and state policymakers to defend and strengthen national and state protections for abortion access and urge the U.S. Food and Drug […]

Our research highlights how abortion bans and restrictions create cascading effects that extend far beyond reproductive health care, compromising the quality and effectiveness of medical care across reproductive and non-reproductive specialties.

ICE placed at least 10,588 people in solitary confinement from April 2024-May 2025 and solitary confinement rates are surging under the Trump administration, according to a new report published today by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), the Peeler Immigration Lab, and experts at Harvard Law School. As the crisis in immigration detention facilities across the […]

The use of solitary confinement in U.S. immigration detention has risen at an alarming rate, with unprecedented numbers of immigrants held in isolation.

Ambassador (ret.) Mark C. Storella was a United States Foreign Service Officer for over three decades serving as Ambassador to Zambia, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, and Dean of the Leadership and Management School of the Foreign Service Institute. Other postings include Deputy Chief of Mission in Brussels, at the […]

Trump administration disruptions to the U.S. government’s global HIV/AIDS program PEPFAR have caused severe harms – including previously unreported impacts on stigma, physical violence, and public trust – to people in Tanzania and Uganda, according to a new research brief published today by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Ahead of PEPFAR reauthorization negotiations in Congress […]

U.S. cuts to global aid have caused backsliding on decades of progress in HIV care, treatment, and prevention.

The Trump administration’s sudden funding freezes and cuts on foreign aid and the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have already caused severe damage to the health of people around the world – and “threaten catastrophic harms” to global health in the years ahead, warn Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), the Open […]

Israel must immediately lift its restrictions on food to some 2 million people in Gaza –  including the entire population of 320,000 children under the age of five – and ensure the delivery of medical supplies and other aid necessary to address mass starvation, said Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Global Human Rights Clinic […]

Combatants in Ethiopia have perpetrated widespread, systematic, and deliberate acts of conflict-related sexual and reproductive violence, according to a new report published today by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH).  The new report (“You Will Never Be Able to Give Birth”: Conflict-Related Sexual […]

The conflict in Tigray, Ethiopia started in November 2020 between the government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), with involvement from Eritrean military forces who were called into to support Ethiopian armed forces, and numerous ethno-regional militia groups notably from the Amhara and Afar regions of Ethiopia. The conflict was marked by […]

Disponible en français ici. متوفر باللغة العربية هنا. While the undersigned organizations welcome the long-awaited recognition that functional immunities are not an obstacle to prosecution in the presence of international crimes, they regret that the French Cour de cassation invalidated the arrest warrant for Bashar al-Assad while he was still President of Syria.   In the […]

The abrupt and sweeping cuts to U.S. global health support has led to preventable deaths, shortages of medicines, and reduced access to services for vulnerable communities in both Kenya and Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to two new research briefs published today by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).  “Sexual violence survivors unable to access […]

The United States has historically been the largest provider of humanitarian assistance and bilateral support to the health sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), contributing billions of dollars annually through mechanisms such as United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Global Health Security […]

The United States (U.S.) has historically been a major supporter of public health initiatives in Kenya. From 2020– 2025, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) committed approximately $2.5 billion in foreign assistance to Kenya (approximately $470 million per year) with 80 percent allocated for health-related programs. In January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump […]

PHR is documenting the harms of aid cuts and defending the right to health for all.

In a historic move, the Government of Kenya has paid 16 million Kenyan shillings (approx. USD $124,000) in compensation to four of the eight survivors of sexual violence in Petition 122 of 2013, marking the first time in Kenya’s history that survivors of conflict-related sexual violence are receiving official compensation for the harm they endured. […]

The U.S. House of Representatives vote to approve the Trump administration’s proposed rescissions package – clawing back $9 billion in congressionally approved spending, including $8 billion for foreign aid – will have immediate, profound, and devastating consequences on global health, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said today.   “The rescission bill and broader cuts to global […]

Ukraine has endured 2000 attacks on the country’s health care system, according to documentation and monitoring by human rights and humanitarian organizations. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 Ukraine has experienced:  “This brutal milestone and pattern of attacks clearly illustrates the Russian Federation’s aim to eliminate Ukrainians’ access to life-saving medical care and create […]