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Violations of human rights in wars, civil conflicts, and brutal repression mounted by governments against their own citizens often have profound consequences to individual and public health and may, in turn, produce humanitarian crises. The skills of physicians, medical and forensic scientists, and other health workers are uniquely valuable in human rights investigations and documentation, producing evidence of abuse more credible and less vulnerable to challenge than traditional methods of case reporting. Only in recent decades, however, have physicians organized specifically to meet this responsibility. This article presents case studies from the field missions of Physicians for Human Rights to illustrate the investigation and documentation of violations of medical neutrality, refugee health crises, the use of indiscriminate weapons, torture, deliberate injury and rape, and mass executions. Participation of health workers in the defense of human rights now includes investigation and documentation of health effects in threatened populations as well as individual victims.

The use of chemical weapons in conflict represents a breach of international law as well as a grave violation of human rights. Investigating allegations of their use often is difficult. A basic tool is the survey interview. Experience has shown that a rigorous epidemiologic approach should be taken. A primary emphasis should be designing the study so that consistency of responses can be analyzed to judge the validity of the testimony. Only when the testimony can withstand this scrutiny is it possible to surmise the possible identity of agents employed. Securing samples of the putative agent is of obvious importance. Two recent investigations are discussed herein, one conducted by US Army medical researchers on allegations of chemical weapons use against the Hmong in Laos and another mounted by us on allegations of poison-gas attack against the Iraqi Kurds.