Investigations
War Crimes
A war crime is a punishable offense, under international law, for violations of the law of war by any person or persons, military or civilian. Every violation of the law of war is a war crime. Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as: "Willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including... willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power, or willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, ...taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."
PHR has worked around the globe to expose war crimes. The International Forensic Program has prepared evidence of war crimes and testified at various international bodies, including tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the Special Court of Sierra Leone. PHR has advocated for rape and sexual violence to be classified as war crimes in Bosnia and Liberia. PHR has also investigated Iraq's criminal use of chemical weapons against its Kurdish population, exhumed mass graves in Rwanda establishing evidence for war crimes prosecutions, created a database to help identify thousands of bodies exhumed in Srebrenica, and conducted a population-based study of civilian deaths, torture and other violations in Chechnya.
The goals of PHR's investigations include revealing the truth, establishing accountability and grounds for prosecuting perpetrators, giving voice to victims, demonstrating the vast scope and trauma of rights violations, and creating an effective platform for advocating an end to the abuses.
PHR reports on war crimes include:
Darfur: Assault on Survival, A Call for Security, Justice, and Restitution -- PHR's evidence of the systematic denial of livelihoods for Darfurians, along with other indicators, classifies the crimes committed by the Government of Sudan and its proxy militia, the Janjaweed, as genocide under international law.
War Crimes in Kosovo -- The Kosovo crisis resulted in the largest population displacement in Europe since the Second World War. By using a population-based approach in Albania and Macedonia, this study is the first to establish patterns of human rights violations and the pervasiveness of violence and abuses by Serb forces committed among the refugees when they were in Kosovo.
Serb forces committed widespread human rights violations, including killings; beatings; torture; sexual assault; separation from family members; disappearances; shootings; lootings and destruction of property; and violations of medical neutrality. Until Serb forces departed, to be an ethnic Albanian in Kosovo was to be vulnerable to abuses for no other reason than one's ethnic identity. Such accounts of suffering, individually, and collectively, are a powerful testimony to the cruelty, thoroughness, and breadth of Yugoslav President Milosevic's war against unarmed and helpless Kosovar Albanian men, women, and children.
Related links:
International Forensic Program
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