Physicians for Human Rights
Using science and medicine to stop human rights violationsSusannah Sirkin, M.Ed.
In her role as Director of International Policy and Partnerships and Senior Advisor, Susannah Sirkin oversees PHR’s international policy engagement including our work with the United Nations, domestic and international justice systems and human rights coalitions. Sirkin is also responsible for managing and multiplying PHR’s strategic partnerships globally, expanding our volunteers from the medical and scientific community, and increasing our partnerships with NGOs, medical institutions, and other relationships that can enhance PHR’s effectiveness and grow the field of human rights activists. Sirkin joined PHR’s staff in 1987 shortly after its founding. She serves as a senior advisor across all areas and in particular, PHR’s work to stop sexual violence in conflict zones – an initiative she created in 2011.
Sirkin has organized health and human rights investigations for PHR in dozens of countries, including documentation of genocide and systematic rape in Darfur, Sudan; exhumations of mass graves in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda for the International Criminal Tribunals; investigations into consequences of human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Kosovo, Kuwait, Somalia, Turkey, and the US among others.
She has worked on studies of sexual violence in Bosnia, Chad, Sierra Leone, and Thailand. She has authored and edited numerous reports and articles on the medical consequences of human rights violations, physical evidence of human rights abuses, and physician complicity in violations.
Sirkin served as PHR's representative on the Steering Committee of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines from 1992-1997, a campaign for which PHR shared in the 1997 Nobel Prize for Peace.
Susannah has a BA in European studies from Mount Holyoke College and a Masters of Education from Boston University.
Blog Posts by Susannah Sirkin, M.Ed.
- UN Commission on the Status of Women Affirms International Dedication to Ending All Forms of Violence Against Women (March 19, 2013)
- Standing in Solidarity with Medical Colleagues and the People of South Kivu (October 31, 2012)
- International Campaign to Stop Rape in Conflict Holds DRC Launch (May 18, 2012)
- Witnessing Justice for Victims of Karadžić (February 14, 2012)
- City of Joy (February 10, 2012)
Articles & Opinion Pieces by Susannah Sirkin, M.Ed.
- How Doctors Would Know If Syrians Were Hit With Nerve Gas, NPR.org (May 1, 2013)
- Key Step in Checking Chemical-Arms Use Is Also Hardest, New York Times (April 23, 2013)
- Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (December 7, 2012)
Audio & Video featuring Susannah Sirkin, M.Ed.
- The Principle of Medical Neutrality (January 24, 2012)
- Released Iranian AIDS Doctors Share their Story (November 9, 2011)
- War Crimes and the White House: The Bush Administration's Cover-Up of the Dasht-e-Leili Massacre (July 10, 2009)
