Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) is an organisation of Israeli and
Palestinian physicians that stands at the forefront of the struggle for human
rights – particularly the right to health – in Israel and the occupied
Palestinian territory. PHRI lobbies the state of Israel, demanding that all
residents of Israel and Palestine get the same access and right to health care
regardless their legal status, nationality, ethnicity or faith. PHRI also
provides health services to those residents of Israel and the occupied
Palestinian territory who otherwise would not receive proper health care.
Environmental Rights Action / Friends of the Earth Nigeria
Environmental Rights Action is also known as Friends of the Earth Nigeria and is
the national chapter of Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), the world’s
largest grassroots environmental network. In 2008, Bassey was elected Chair of
Friends of the Earth International. The organisation, in coordination with its
national chapters and under Bassey’s leadership, currently (September 2010) has six
major programme areas: climate justice and energy; food sovereignty; economic
justice; forests and biodiversity; resisting mining, oil and gas; and water.
Bassey and Environmental Rights Action’s major campaigning focus is oil, and the
enormous damage being caused to Nigerian communities and other countries in the
region (Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of
the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Sudan), where oil is produced. He also
works on supporting a broad movement across sub-tropical African countries where
new finds of oil are being made.
PHRI’s mission
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) was founded in 1988 at the start of the
Intifada by Dr. Ruchama Marton and Israeli and Palestinian physicians, motivated
by the conviction that “every person has the right to health in its widest possible
sense, as defined by the principles of human rights, social justice and medical
ethics”.
PHRI’s activities are a mixture between the direct delivery of health and health
awareness services (e.g. through its clinics) to disadvantaged populations, and
campaigning against bureaucratic restrictions that prevent these populations gaining
access to mainstream health services and against the policies and repression that
create the disadvantage in the first place.
Departments
PHRI’s work is organised in a number of departments:
- Clinics: a mobile clinic taking health services to excluded populations in the
“… for their indomitable spirit in
working for the right to health for all
people in Israel and Palestine.”
occupied Palestinian territory; women’s clinics working to empower Palestinian
women within their society by raising their awareness of health-related issues; and
an Open Clinic in Jaffa, which sees over 100 patients each evening.
- The Prisoners and Detainees Department working for the health rights of
prisoners and detainees and against injurious solitary confinement, torture, and
other inhuman treatment of prisoners.
- The Migrants and Undocumented People Department, which campaigns for the
concept that any person resident in Israel should be entitled to social rights (health,
welfare and education) regardless of his or her legal status.
-The Department for Status-less Persons, including the Open Clinic, servicing over
250,000 people residing in Israel without civil status including foreign workers and
their families, asylum seekers from around the world, Palestinian women and
children in Israel who lost their status following the 2003 Citizenship Law,
collaborators and alleged collaborators from the West Bank and Gaza, victims of
human trafficking, and many others living in Israel without legal status.
- The Residents of Israel Department, advocating for a more inclusive Israeli public
health system that eliminates the health inequalities between Israeli residents living
in peripheral rather than central districts, between Arab and Jewish citizens, and
between poor and rich communities, and that includes a broader basket of health
services.
- The Right to Health in the Unrecognised Negev Villages project, seeking to
promote the right to health for the 180,000 Bedouins living in Israel. Most cannot
access basic health care; their villages lack sufficient medical clinics, mother child
health care clinics, and gynaecological, paediatric, and other specialist services.
Further, Bedouins live without the underlying determinants of health like clean
water, electricity, and a hazard-free environment.
- The Occupied Territories Department, which campaigns among other things
against the extreme difficulties that residents of the occupied territories experience
when they have to cross checkpoints for medical reasons.
PHRI has also started campaigning against the inappropriate carrying out of antianthrax
experiments on Israeli soldiers.
From January to July 2009, PHRI (all departments) received 2259 appeals by
individuals from different communities whose right to health was violated and who
needed representation vis-a-vis the authorities. These applications for assistance are
in addition to the individuals who come to PHRI’s clinics for direct medical aid –
16,599 patients during this period of time. PHRI’s volunteer medical staff donated
9179 work hours and its administrative volunteers and translators 3886 work hours.
At the end of 2009, the organisation had 1000 members.
Gaza closure: Continuing the work under most difficult circumstances
With the Gaza closure and Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2008 the work of PHRI has
become even more difficult. That year, for the first time and due to Israel’s closure
of the Gaza crossings, which made it extremely difficult for Palestinian patients to
cross the border, PHRI started taking its mobile clinic into Gaza as well as the West
Bank, making eight medical trips and four deliveries of medical equipment.
Hundreds of patients were examined and counselled, and 37 surgeries performed, as
well as two trainings conducted to treat emotional trauma. In 2009, PHRI only got
permits for three such trips.
Between January and June 2010, 5620 Palestinians received medical care through
PHRI’s mobile clinics. PHRI’s members aided 787 Palestinians from the West Bank
and Gaza to receive exit and entry permits for medical care outside of the occupied
territory, and helped 454 Palestinians navigate the Israeli health system to receive
medical care in Israeli hospitals.
Founder, Awards & Network
The founder and continuing president of PHRI is Dr. Ruchama Marton. In the late
1990s, Marton was especially active against the torture of Palestinian prisoners, her
campaign culminating in 1999 with the Supreme Court making it illegal. Later that
year, she and PHRI received Israel's highest human rights honour, the Emil
Grunzweig Award for Human Rights. Marton, and the Palestinian Dr. Salah Haj
Yehya, who is PHRI’s Field Work Director, received the Jonathan Mann Award in
2002. Marton, and the Palestinian Dr. Salah Haj Yehya, who is PHRI’s Field Work
Director, received the Jonathan Mann Award in 2002.
PHRI is a member of the International Federation of Health and Human Rights
Organisations. It is funded by a range of national and international foundations and
companies.
“PHRI’s main concern is to struggle against wrongs that stem from human conduct, rather than
the illnesses caused by viruses or microbes.”
(Dr. Ruchama Marton)
