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Reflections on the scientific documentation of human rights violations
on procedures for exhuming and analysing human remains may not exist.
Who has custody over the gravesite? Where should the remains be stored?
Who has authority to analyse them? In many cases, assumptions regarded as
normal in the United States and Europe cannot be made. For example, if the
excavation of a grave will take more than a single day, the site should remain
under police custody whenever investigators are not there. It can be very difficult to meet this requirement if the site is difficult to access, or too dangerous even for a police officer to stay overnight. Such dilemmas are common
when the UN is not involved. Most often there is a compromise, and some
standards are met while others are not. If the investigation is meant to provide legal evidence, procedural errors — such as gaps in the chain of custody —
can make it harder to argue for the legal validity of the evidence. It is also
important to consider the different timeframes and objectives of truth commissions and tribunals. A judicial proceeding can be extended for many
months, but a commission does not have that option.
Identification and cause of death
The identity of a cadaver or skeleton and the cause of death are the
two most common issues that a judicial authority or forensic scientist seeks
to resolve. But the answers cannot always be prompt or definitive. From the
point of view of the family, the identification is undoubtedly crucial, since it
ends the period of uncertainty that began with the disappearance. But the
identification process becomes more complicated the longer the body has
decomposed.
Also significant in many cases is the fact that the overwhelming majority of victims are very poor. Largely peasants or indigenous people with cultural patterns different from those of the investigators, they may never have
had access to medical or dental care. This means that they simply will not
have possessed any of the records often used to compare with skeletal
remains. Therefore the usual parameters for making identifications in urban
contexts may not apply.
The use of DNA has brought enormous changes to forensics and criminology, and to the identification process. Contrary to popular belief, however, it is still very difficult to extract DNA from bony remains, because of
contamination of the tissue which occurs during the years of burial. In addition, there are very few laboratories in the world available to process large
numbers of these kinds of samples. Furthermore, judiciaries and families in
most Third World countries do not have the resources to afford their services.