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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1996

The Health Professional as Human Rights Promoter: Ten Years of Physicians for Human Rights (USA).

The founding of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) arose out of concern within the scientific and medical community about the human rights violations affecting their colleagues and the severe health effects of human rights violations on the general population. PHR, as a membership organization, has pioneered the field of the activist health professional in human rights, through its many missions documenting violations both of human rights and of humanitarian law; its advocacy efforts; and its educational programs. It identifies new challenges and effective strategies to protest abuses, engage governments and professional colleagues in dialogue, and support likeminded health professionals who work in situations in which their obligations to their patients are often overridden by their obligations to States that want to hide human rights violations.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2000

[Physicians for Human Rights: a foreign observer at three trials against physicians in Turkey].

Physicians have a professional obligation to be among the first to defend human rights. Accordingly they have established organisations in many countries to that aim, which are united in the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organisations (IFHHRO). The author was invited by this federation to attend several trials against members of the Turkish sister organisation. In one of them the doctor's duty to protect his patients' privacy was at stake. This physician has since been acquitted because of insufficient evidence. In Turkish society there are opposed conservative and liberal democratic forces: on the one hand people try to maintain the democratic and constitutional state, on the other some circles hold the opinion that undemocratic and inhuman measures are necessary to counter the dangers of terrorist movements. Even in the Netherlands the right of physicians not to reveal confidential information regarding 'illegal immigrants' has recently been challenged, and until now the medical organisations have not protested.

Civil Rights↗
PubMed1995

Family physicians and human rights: a case example from former Yugoslavia.

BACKGROUND: The role of family physicians in the protection of human rights is unclear. The purpose of this article is to explore this role through examination of the specific case of former Yugoslavia. METHODS: In January/February 1993, we investigated medical aspects of human rights abuses as part of a fact-finding mission for the Physicians for Human Rights organization. We used primarily qualitative methods, including direct observation, key informant interviews, focus groups, and key document review. RESULTS: We observed pervasive violations of medical neutrality, as indicated by the shelling of Kosevo Hospital, the major tertiary care hospital in Sarajevo. Forty-one percent of former prison camp detainees from north Bosnia housed at the Karlovac, Croatia, refugee camp had scars consistent with physical abuse. Civilians in north central Bosnia and Sarajevo were targeted through physical violence, artillery shelling, and strangulation of the public health infrastructure--food, water, electricity, heat, and medical supplies. CONCLUSIONS: Physicians can be uniquely useful in the investigation of human rights. The flexibility of family physicians and their attention to the biopsycosocial aspects of health can be especially useful. Family physicians should become actively involved in the protection of human rights.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Physician participation in human rights abuses in southern Iraq.

CONTEXT: Physicians are known to have participated in human rights abuses in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime, but the nature and extent of that participation are not well documented. OBJECTIVES: To characterize the nature of physician participation in human rights abuses, identify structural factors that facilitated physician participation, and assess approaches for accountability and for prevention of future physician participation in abuses. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: A self-administered survey in June and July, 2003, of a convenience sample of 98 physicians and semistructured interviews of hospital directors and physicians in 3 major hospitals with general surgical units in 2 cities in southern Iraq. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Respondent reports of peer and self-participation in human rights abuses in Iraq since 1988. RESULTS: The majority of participants were male (88% [86/98]) and Shi'a Muslims (97% [95/98]). Respondents reported a mean of 6.8 years in practice. A total of 71% of respondents (65/91) reported that torture was a problem to an extreme extent in Iraq since 1988. The proportion of respondents indicating that, since 1988, their physician peers as a group were extremely or quite a bit involved in human rights abuses included 50% (42/83) for nontherapeutic amputation of ears as a form of punishment, 49% (39/79) for falsification of medical-legal reports of torture, and 32% (25/78) for falsification of death certificates. Fewer numbers of respondents (range, n = 2 to 6) reported participation in abuses themselves. More than half (52% [48/92]) indicated that physicians did not willingly participate in these abuses; 93% (52/71) reported that the Iraqi paramilitary force Fedayeen Saddam was responsible for initiating physician complicity. Fear of harm to oneself or family members was a common explanation for complicity. Respondents reported that physicians who refused to participate in abuses faced consequences including loss of job, imprisonment, torture, and disappearance. Respondents reported on preventive measures that should be undertaken to prevent physician involvement in future abuses, including increasing human rights and ethics education of physicians (99% [79/80]), legal provisions to ensure effective monitoring (97% [73/75]), punitive sanctions for physicians who commit abuses (96% [77/80]), and ensuring the independence of physicians from state authorities (95% [76/80]). CONCLUSIONS: Although not generalizable beyond the study participants, the findings of this study suggest that among those surveyed, physician participation in human rights abuses included falsification of medical-legal reports of alleged torture, physical mutilation as a form of punishment, and falsification of death certificates. As Iraq rebuilds, it is essential that the country address these violations and enact measures to prevent physicians from future complicity in human rights abuses.

Female↗
PubMed1993

The role of physicians in conflicts and humanitarian crises. Case studies from the field missions of Physicians for Human Rights, 1988 to 1993.

Violations of human rights in wars, civil conflicts, and brutal repression mounted by governments against their own citizens often have profound consequences to individual and public health and may, in turn, produce humanitarian crises. The skills of physicians, medical and forensic scientists, and other health workers are uniquely valuable in human rights investigations and documentation, producing evidence of abuse more credible and less vulnerable to challenge than traditional methods of case reporting. Only in recent decades, however, have physicians organized specifically to meet this responsibility. This article presents case studies from the field missions of Physicians for Human Rights to illustrate the investigation and documentation of violations of medical neutrality, refugee health crises, the use of indiscriminate weapons, torture, deliberate injury and rape, and mass executions. Participation of health workers in the defense of human rights now includes investigation and documentation of health effects in threatened populations as well as individual victims.

Blast Injuries↗