Athena Kolbe

Athena Kolbe is a human rights researcher, writer, and doctoral candidate affiliated with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

In 2006, Athena Kolbe (along with co-author Royce Hutson) published the results of a household study in The Lancet which found that 8000 people had been killed and an estimated 35000 women and girls had been sexually assaulted in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in the 22 months after the ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

In collaboration with the Small Arms Survey, Athena Kolbe conducted a study in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in the summer of 2009 that found just over half the people in three highly populated zones had access to electricity. Most used water kiosks as their main source of drinking water and few had water piped into their homes. Most homes used pit latrines and more than 90 percent of those surveyed by Kolbe used charcoal rather than gas as their cooking fuel.

Kolbe and colleagues conducted a post-earthquake needs assessment after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti which determined that nearly 160,000 people died in the Port-au-Prince area, less estimated death toll released by the Haitian government. Most of those killed in the earthquake were children under 12. Some of the most commonly reported illnesses after the earthquake were diarrhea, headaches and fever, and in some cases these treatable illnesses resulted in death. Kolbe et al. estimated that 10,000 individuals were sexually assaulted in the six weeks after the earthquake.

In 2007 and 2008, Athena Kolbe (along with co-authors Royce Hutson, Bernadette Stringer, Harry Shanon, Ted Haines and Imad Salamy, conducted the "Health Human Rights & Armed Violence in South Lebanon" study. This study found that more than 5000 people had been injured and 70,000 homes damaged in the July 2006 conflict between Israel and Hizbollah.

Athena Kolbe and Royce Hutson co-authored "Survey Research", a chapter in The Handbook of Social Work Research Methods, edited by Bruce Thyer (2009).