Dr. Harold E. Robles is well known for his international humanitarian work. He became a devotee of Albert Schweitzer at the age of eight, and in 1973 he founded the Albert Schweitzer Center in the Netherlands. Two years later, he was appointed Secretary General of the International Schweitzer Organization (ASIL), an organization founded by Dr. Schweitzer in the 1930s in Strasbourg, France.
In 1981, Robles immigrated to the United States where together with Rhena Schweitzer Miller, the daughter of Dr. Schweitzer, he founded the Albert Schweitzer Institute for the Humanities (ASIH), an organization dedicated to the philosophy of Albert Schweitzer. In 1998, at the age of fifty, he retired from the Institute and was given the title President Emeritus.

In 1999, Dr. Robles founded the Medical Knowledge Institute Trust, an international non-profit organization that focuses on offering education and information, grounded in the conviction that health education is a human right. In 2013 he and the trustees changed the name of the organization to Health Promotion South Africa Trust (HPSA).

In September 2008, Dr. Robles was inducted for a period of two years into The Third Chamber, otherwise known as the shadow parliament for international cooperation in the Netherlands. Its 150 members work on political and public support for international cooperation.

Dr. Robles has received significant recognition for his work. On 29 April 2009, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands granted him a Knighthood, "Ridder in de Orde van Oranje Nassau." In 2012 he was named "Outstanding African Personality for Health Advocacy," and in November 2016 President Barack Obama honored Dr. Robles and HPSA. It was also a great honor for him to be one of 500 Dutch citizens invited to attend the coronation of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands on 30 April 2013 in Amsterdam.
Robles has written several books about Albert Schweitzer, published in the Netherlands, former East Germany, Italy, China, Korea, former Yugoslavia and the United States.

He is Goodwill Ambassador of the Ethnic Business Women Society of the Netherlands and Goodwill Representative of the Southern Africa/Netherlands Chamber of Commerce (SANEC).