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 […]

Sponsoring hate radio and purchasing large quantities of hand-wielded weapons can result in an arrest on charges of genocide, even more than 25 years after the fact. That was the rare “good news of the day” on Saturday. One of the world’s most wanted men was finally captured in a dawn raid on May 16 […]

On August 30, the United Nations marked the first International Day of the Disappeared. BBC radio's World Service interviewed PHR's Stefan Schmitt about identifying victims of the Rwandan genocide. Source: BBC World Service

A generation has grown up without knowing about the genocide in Rwanda. The killing fields there are now recorded in history books, and college students sometimes stare blankly when told that in the space of three months in 1994, almost a million people in this small east African country were slaughtered by their fellow citizens […]

Today, as Rwanda launches three months of events to commemorate the genocide that ripped apart that small central African country 20 years ago, human rights advocates are still wondering what happened to the vows of “never again.” Syria, Sudan, and the Central African Republic are engulfed in conflicts claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands […]

In the newspapers, we read wrenching stories about suffering in faraway places such as Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, and Myanmar; through this work, these stories have become real to me. Evaluating these immigrants has provided me with an international education…I discovered a new dimension of myself as a physician.— Dr. Katalin Roth, PHR Asylum Network Member […]

Janvier Yubahwe, a medical intern at Ruhengeri District Hospital in northern Rwanda, starts his day around 6:30 a.m. with a 15 minute walk to the hospital from his house. Recently, photographer Greg Kendall-Ball and I spent the day at the hospital with Janvier and his colleagues, learning more about the life of a doctor in […]

Rwandan children at a soccer field in Kigali, Rwanda. Emily Bancroft for PHR. Emily Bancroft, Senior Coordinator of PHR's Health Action AIDS program, has spent the last month working in Rwanda. Emily has reported in the Boston Globe's Passport blog on some of her work with Rwandan children, teens and young adults who have AIDS. […]

As Senior Coordinator of PHR's Health Action AIDS East Africa Program, I get frequent opportunities to be in the field and connect with amazing human rights activists from the region. Last week in Kigali, Rwanda, I met with two incredible young doctors – Dr. Davis Kashake Karengya and Dr. Charles Ntare – who have devoted […]

For a two-week period at the end of June 1997, a three-person team from PHR worked in the Great Lakes region of Africa compiling testimony and data regarding the existence of human rights abuses committed by governments or warring parties against civilian and refugee populations. The report’s findings on human rights violations in Eastern Congo […]