PHR-I Praesentation

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Physicians for Human Rights-Israel

• Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
  (PHR-Israel) was founded in 1988 with the aim of
  striving to promote medical human rights in
  Israel and in the territories under its effective
  control. The basic values of PHR-Israel are human
  dignity, protection of bodily and mental
  integrity, and promotion of the right to health
  and medical care.
• These values guide the association's activities
  and campaigns. We believe that it is our duty to
  be fully informed of human rights violations, to
  disseminate this information and to struggle
  against such violations and for the right to
  health, for individuals and for the community.

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Major Projects

1. Occupied Territories
2. Migrant Workers (Foreign Workers)
3. Prisoners and Detainees
4. Right to Health of Residents of Israel
5. Unrecognized Bedouin Negev Villages

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Occupied Territories

• Since 1967 the Palestinian population in the Gaza
  Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem has lived
  under Israeli occupation. The State of Israel, as
  the occupying power, is obligated to respect,
  protect and realize the right to health for all
  residents of the Occupied Territories.

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Restrictions on Freedom of Movement
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Closure, Curfew, Blockade, Roadblock
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Ramifications

• Red Crescent ambulances evacuate only 30 of the
  patients directly from their homes. The rest are
  required to reach the roadblocks on their own.
• Until September 2000 95 of women gave birth in
  hospitals.
• Since September 2000 50 of women give birth in
  hospitals.
• Since September 2000 a rise of 500 in the
  number of stillbirths in the rural regions.

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Attacks on Ambulances
Red Crescent ambulance in Jenin which was shot in
April 2002. As a result of the shooting Dr.
Sliman Khalil, Director of the Palestine Red
Crescent Society in Jenin, was killed.
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Physicians for Human Rights-Israel Protest,
Tel-Aviv
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The Mobile Clinic
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Goals

• Primary care to patients who cannot access
  medical care.
• Exposing the situation to the medical team,
  thereby passing on the information to the Israeli
  public. Re-humanization of Palestinian society in
  the eyes of the Israeli public.
• A gesture of solidarity with the Palestinian
  population.
• Cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian
  physicians.
• Protest against the government's policies of
  closure and occupation.
• Resistance to the governments attempts to lock
  Israeli human rights activists out of the
  Occupied Territories.
• Use of the information gathered during mobile
  clinics for advocacy and campaigns.

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Migrant Workers
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Overview

• In 21st-century Israel, hundreds of thousands of
  people live without rights and without access to
  the Israeli public healthcare system. This
  includes migrant children and adults, with or
  without work permits, women trapped in the sex
  industry, asylum seekers, refugees and others.
  All arrived in Israel mainly in order to find a
  livelihood, and some have lived in Israel for
  many years, gradually becoming part of Israeli
  society and economy.

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Refugees and Asylum Seekers

• In 2001, when the world celebrated the jubilee of
  the signing of the Refugees Convention, Israel
  began to take the first steps towards
  implementing the convention. Israel has done
  very little over the years to protect migrant
  people who were persecuted because of their race,
  religion, nationality or political stand. For
  years, Israel refrained from establishing a
  system for recognition of refugees. As a result,
  many remained stateless for extended periods.
  Many came to PHR-Israel requesting medical
  treatment, with a background of extreme distress
  and severe human rights violations.

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The Open Clinic

• The Open Clinic was founded in 1998, with the
  goal of offering primary and secondary medical
  care to migrant workers. It is run by volunteers,
  and opens 3 evenings a week for general care, one
  evening for gynecology, and one morning for
  pediatrics. Since the clinic was founded, over
  10,000 patient files have been opened.

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Prisoners and Detainees
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• The State of Israel holds thousands of people in
  custody. These prisoners and detainees are held
  by the police, army or Prisons Service, who are
  responsible for their welfare. The fact that
  these people's freedom has been taken from them
  cannot justify denial of their right to receive
  adequate medical care and decent living
  conditions.

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Main Problems

• Numerous cases of medical neglect isolation of
  prisoners for extended periods holding mentally
  ill patients in regular jailing facilities
  overcrowding poor sanitation conditions
  shackling of sick prisoners to hospital beds
  torture during interrogations.

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Doctors' Participation in Torture of Palestinian
Detainees under Interrogation
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Police Detention Center Inspections

• For the past 6 years, Physicians for Human
  Rights-Israel has been visiting and inspecting
  police detention centers. These visits lead to
  identification and publicizing of fundamental
  problems, and ultimately to improvements. The
  Israel Prisons Service and the IDF do not allow
  independent inspections of their facilities.

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Health Rights of Residents of Israel
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• The National Health Insurance law, passed in
  1994, was intended to guarantee equal health
  services for all. Despite good intentions, the
  law and its implementation suffer from several
  faults many services are not included in the
  free range of services provided under the law
  (e.g., in-patient nursing care, mental
  healthcare, dental care) The range of services
  is being eroded since the Finance Ministry
  prevents updates and does not transfer all
  payments to the HMOs private healthcare has
  crept into the public and state medical
  institutions.

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Hotline

• Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Adva
  Center for Social Justice run a joint hotline to
  handle applications from residents insured by the
  National Health Insurance law. The hotline
  responds to questions regarding a range of issues
  and problems relating to rights under the law
  and to the definition of the law.

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• Palestinians citizens of Israel suffer from
  ongoing systematic discrimination, expressed,
  inter alia, by the level and scope of medical
  services that are available, or not available, in
  Arab communities, e.g., a lack of national EMS
  centers and various language-related medical
  services (mental health, speech therapy)
  discrimination regarding budgets allotted to
  hospitals in Nazareth, and more.

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Unrecognized Bedouin Villages in the Negev
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• Even prior to the State of Israel there were many
  Bedouin villages in the Negev desert in the south
  of Israel. Today, there are 46 villages which are
  not "recognized" by the State, and they are home
  to about 76,000 people - all citizens of Israel.
  This "un-recognition" leads to a lack of
  infrastructure and basic services (such as
  connections to the electricity and water
  networks, sewage systems and waste disposal)
  leading to health hazards and infectious disease
  as well as a lack of proper access routes to
  the villages, limited emergency services, and
  substandard primary healthcare facilities.

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www.phr.org.il