Date: 2024-07-26 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00019412
Activism
Physicians for Human Rights
Far too many issues are impacting the good work that physicians are called to do ... August 20th, 2020
Peter Burgess
---------------------
Our findings on the reckless use of tear gas and rubber bullets. PHR E-News
---------------------
How U.S. Federal Law Enforcement Attacked Volunteer Medics and Used Dangerous Crowd-Control Weapons As people across the United States continued to protest the death of George Floyd and voice their support for racial equality, the Trump administration responded by sending federal forces to Portland, Oregon, where it soon became clear that demonstrations were being met with excessive force. To document these abuses, in July PHR deployed a team of expert medical and human rights researchers to Portland to assess the use of tear gas, rubber bullets, and other crowd-control weapons against demonstrators. Read the preliminary findings of what we saw in Portland and why dangerous crowd-control weapons must be regulated.
---------------------
Health Organizations to U.S. Governors: Take Action to Keep Health Workers Safe As COVID-19 cases and deaths of health workers mount in the United States, a group of the country’s leading health professional associations have called on state governors to enact and enforce stronger protections for workers in health care settings. Together with PHR, ten leading health organizations – which collectively represent tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, and others who work in the country’s coronavirus-besieged hospitals and clinics – have issued a joint letter to the nation’s governors, pressing them to take up urgent, universal, and enforceable protections for workers in health care settings. Read the statement calling for better protections of health care workers on the front lines of COVID-19 in the United States.
---------------------
Watch: The Risk of Mass Atrocities During a Pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic poses a great threat to populations already at risk of genocide and crimes against humanity at the hands of their governments. The pandemic may be weaponized by authoritarian states as an opportunity to commit mass atrocities while attention is elsewhere or to deny certain populations their right to health. On Wednesday, August 19, PHR convened an expert discussion on populations at-risk, specifically the case of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who in 2017 were driven from their homes and forced to flee across the border to Bangladesh. The discussion, which was moderated by PHR Board Member Ambassador Stephen Rapp, is part of PHR’s weekly webinar series on the multidimensional impacts of COVID-19 on health and human rights. Watch the discussion on mass atrocities and browse previous webinars in our series.
---------------------
Voices from the Pandemic: In ICE Detention, “Everyone that doesn’t have it yet is going to get it.” When Dr. Merlys Rodriguez Hernandez fled persecution in Cuba in September 2019, the 28-year-old physician hoped she and her husband would be able to embark on a new life with the protection of asylum in the United States. Instead, she has spent the last 10 months locked up in U.S. immigration detention. And that was just the beginning. Dr. Rodriguez Hernandez is just one of the nearly 4,200 people who has contracted COVID-19 in U.S. immigration detention, where people are at extremely high risk for exposure to the coronavirus. Read more about Dr. Rodriguez and why health professionals have joined PHR to sound the alarm about the risks of COVID-19 in U.S. detention facilities.
---------------------
Realizing Accountability for Conflict-related Sexual Violence PHR has long been committed to supporting justice processes for survivors of sexual violence. So we were honored when our director of programs Karen Naimer was included in a new digital dialogue alongside United Nations Under-Secretary General and Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, as well as Margot Wallström, former Minister for Foreign Affairs for Sweden. Naimer discussed national accountability for child survivors of sexual violence in Kavumu, DRC – the topic of an article co-authored by PHR and TRIAL International in a new, Special Issue of the Journal of International Criminal Justice.
---------------------
Watch the expert discussion here. DONATE: Support PHR’s Critical Work These continue to be unprecedented times. And while our team of researchers and health professionals has been working to strengthen the world's response to COVID-19, the current public health crisis only highlights the issues PHR has been working on for decades: advocating for science- and rights-based approaches, protecting health workers, and safeguarding the dignity and human rights of all people.
---------------------
Physicians for Human Rights 256 West 38th Street, 9th Floor New York, NY 10018 © 2020 Physicians for Human Rights web@phr.org phr.org 646.564.3720