Biography of Dr. Charlie Clements

Dr. Charlie Clements is a human rights and public health advocate, renowned for his courageous leadership on a range of domestic and international human rights and humanitarian issues.  He is known throughout the human rights community for his ground-breaking efforts to end U.S. intervention in Central America in the 1980s and more recently for his efforts to raise international awareness about access to water as a human rights issue and of the danger of landmines.

 As a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Charlie began his career as a pilot during the Vietnam War.  It was the academy's thorough training in honor and ethics that led Charlie to refuse to fly missions in support of the invasion of Cambodia.  After leaving military service under these difficult conditions, he attended the University of Washington School of Community Medicine and Public Health. 

 Early in his career as a physician, he went to Guazapa, El Salvador, where he was responsible for health care and preventive medicine for 10,000 civilians in rural communities. He developed public health campaigns, training programs for medics, and provision of acute medical services in conditions of extreme duress.  He also served as liaison to the international Committee of the Red Cross for Prisoner of War-related matters.  He saw firsthand how the policies of the U.S. government were exacerbating the oppression of the people of El Salvador and throughout Central America.  This understanding led him to co-found the International Medical Relief Fund (IMRF), where he served as president during the 16 years it functioned (1982-1998). 

 Returning to the United States, Charlie founded Americans for Peace in the Americas, a Washington, D.C.-based foreign policy and public education organization, which conducted public forums, educational conferences, congressional briefings, and delegations concerning U.S. foreign policy in Central America.  This in turn led Charlie to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, where from 1986-1988 he served as the director of human rights education.  While at UUSC, Charlie lead  scores of elected officials to Central America as part of human rights delegations to see firsthand the results of U.S. policies on the region's people.  Additionally, he provided congressional testimony on several occasions.

 After leaving the Service Committee in 1988, Charlie helped develop and create the Boston‑based start‑up SatelLife, a not-for-profit with the mission of establishing electronic mail networks for the health sectors in many countries in Africa before they received access to the Internet.  After six years, with Charlie as executive director, SatelLife was operating in 15 African and also five Asian countries.    

Charlie has also served as a consultant to the Pew Charitable Trusts, developing a program of philanthropy for Mexico‑U.S. border regions.  This was followed by a successful tenure as executive director of Border WaterWorks, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the El Paso Community Foundation, which assists small U.S. communities along the border to resolve their water and wastewater problems with self-help construction of infrastructure.

 Charlie has also served on numerous boards of directors.  He is a past president of the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility, as well as Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), where he was a member for 14 years. While president of PHR, he represented the organization at both the Treaty to Ban Landmines signing in Ottawa, Canada, and the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which PHR helped to found and lead.

Charlie is the author of Witness to War published by Bantam in 1984 and printed in four languages.  He is also the subject of an Academy Award-winning documentary by the same name.  He has been widely recognized and honored for his humanitarian work.

An open letter from Charlie Clements
UUSC trustees name Clements as new president