July 18 marks Nelson Mandela Day, which honors the legacy of the late President of South Africa and recognizes the nearly three decades that he spent in prison during apartheid. In accordance with the Nelson Mandela Rules (revised Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners), adopted by the UN in 2015, this internationally recognized day is to be used to promote humane conditions of imprisonment and to raise awareness of prisoners as a continuous part of society. 

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a human rights NGO that shared in the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, and which uses medicine and science to help address severe human rights violations, furthers the goals of Nelson Mandela Day through its decades-long work to ensure access to needed health care in detention settings.  

Since its founding in 1986, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has investigated and documented human rights abuses worldwide, including the denial of health care in a range of detention settings.

With a mission to secure justice and universal human rights for all, PHR regularly highlights cases in which state actors have violated their obligation to safeguard the health and human dignity of persons in state custody.  They have done so, for example, through:

• interviews with former prisoners of conscience about conditions inside prisons;

• detailed reporting on the treatment of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center; 

• investigations of torture allegations involving detained medical doctors and civilian protestors in Bahrain and other countries; and

• advocacy for the release of doctors prosecuted for defending human rights in Turkey.

PHR has also highlighted violations arising in the context of immigration detention, including in the United States, and has raised awareness of the serious health consequences of family separation.  As part of PHR’s Asylum Network, more than 1,400 health professionals across the United States assist PHR in evaluating the medical and psychological health of asylum seekers.  PHR also supports the work of those who have reported threats to child health and safety in family detention centers.