Advocacy Toolkit

Health Professionals as Human Rights Advocates

A Unique and Powerful Voice

Health professionals have a powerful role to play in the struggle for human rights. Because they have expertise in matters that directly affect human health and welfare, and because they hold positions of authority in their communities, physicians, nurses, psychologists, and those in other health-related fields are uniquely positioned to influence policy and effect change.

• Health professionals possess specialized skills and knowledge pertinent to human rights. They can examine a torture survivor or rape victim and assess life-threatening conditions in refugee camps or prisons. These experts are able to convince policy makers of the link between human rights violations and data on illness and death. The scientific rigor of such assessments enables our experts to speak with unquestioned authority.
• The objectivity and credibility of physicians, scientists, and other health professionals enable our members to be heard in the halls of Congress, at international conferences, town meetings, and in the media.
• The ethical obligations of the professions generate a distinct and critical voice for PHR members and supporters, especially the conduct of professionals themselves in situations of armed conflict, and participation in interrogation of prisoners or in executions. PHR members have organized to press for unequivocal human rights positions of professional associations, and have campaigned for reform of these institutions when they have fallen short.
• Evidence collected by forensic scientists can provide irrefutable documentation of war crimes, often leading to successful prosecutions, and medical evaluations of asylum applicants by physicians and psychologists can assure safe haven for survivors of torture and political violence. PHR experts have given expert testimony at international tribunals and before immigration judges.
• The influence of the health professions has been harnessed to make the case for a ban on landmines, end US torture policy and physician involvement in it, support investments in health infrastructure to prevent and treat HIV, and to abolish the juvenile death penalty.

Individual doctors, nurses, public health experts, scientists, and other health professionals have signed letters to governments and published opinion pieces in leading newspapers, garnered editorials in scientific journals, and lent their name to petitions such as PHR’s Call to Action on HIV/AIDS and Call to Prevent Torture and Abuse of Detainees in US Custody and other advocacy efforts.

The disciplines of medicine, science, and public health are shared throughout the world, creating a global network of health professionals who are increasingly working together to promote and defend human rights and health for all people.