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Evaluating the Role of Forensic Anthropologists in Human Rights Investigations of Missing Persons

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Abstract

The violation of human rights perpetrated by the State against their respective civilian populations occurred principally at the turn of the twentieth century, commencing with the Armenian genocide in 1915, which claimed over a million victims at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. This display of violence towards non-armed civilians was followed by the Holocaust during which the Third Reich directed mass killings against the Jews and other targeted groups within Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, claiming millions of lives. Subsequent to these two dominant events in the history of humanity, the violence did not subside, and for the next five decades, genocides, war crimes and crimes against humanity accompanied by acts such as torture, rape, forced disappearances through illegal detention and extrajudicial killings have taken place against religious, racial, ethnic or national groups. Most often these have been associated with civil wars and international conflicts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Genocide means the destruction in whole or in part of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group through a series of actions that do not necessarily include death, such as the transfer of children from their original group to another, or causing serious mental harm to the targeted group, and which does not necessarily have to take place in times of armed conflict.

  2. 2.

    War crimes are those that go against international law and can include unarmed civilians.

  3. 3.

    Crimes against humanity are those committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against unarmed civilians, with clear knowledge of the attack. Like genocide it does not need to occur in times of armed conflict.

  4. 4.

    In forensic settings there are two types of scenes referred to as open and closed. Open scenes are those where there is no record of who the victims might be, as in genocides and the 9/11 attacks; while close scenes are those where there are records that attest who the victims are, as in the case of airline rosters when there is an air disaster.

  5. 5.

    Sexual dimorphism is caused by the hormonal differences between males and females. This causes males to be bigger and more robust, although there are always exceptions to the rule (Mays, 2010).

  6. 6.

    Forensic odontologists in many instances can be absent during the post-mortem examination. Those who are not professionals in this field should not attempt to do the cross check between ante and post-mortem evidence (Skinner, Alempijevic, & Stanojevic, 2010).

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  1. Forensic anthropologist - independent consultant, speaker, author, and researcher, Bone Seekers, UK

    Roxana Ferllini M.A., M.C.S.F.S.

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  1. Roxana Ferllini M.A., M.C.S.F.S.
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  1. Nursing and Health Sciences, California State University, East Bay, San Francisco, California, USA

    Stephen J. Morewitz

  2. Forensic Archaeology and Genocide, Investigation, Staffordshire University, Staffordshire, United Kingdom

    Caroline Sturdy Colls

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Ferllini, R. (2016). Evaluating the Role of Forensic Anthropologists in Human Rights Investigations of Missing Persons. In: Morewitz, S., Sturdy Colls, C. (eds) Handbook of Missing Persons. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40199-7_33

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