The Investigation of Historic Missing Persons Cases: Genocide and ‘Conflict Time’ Human Rights Abuses

The twentieth century has been described as the ‘age of extremes’ (The age of extremes: The short 20th century, 1914–1991, Abacus, London, 1994) due to the large number of cases of genocide and human rights abuses during ‘conflict time’ (Memorials and ‘conflict-time’ in the contested city of Vukovar, Association of Critical Heritage Studies Inaugural Conference, University of Gothenburg, 2012). In some countries, systematic methodologies have been developed in order to locate the bodies of missing persons, resulting in the successful identification and reinternment of these remains. However, there are many cases in which the victims of genocide and human rights abuses are still missing decades and even centuries after the crimes were perpetrated. This chapter will consider: the various reasons why search and recovery programmes might not be undertaken in relation to historic genocide and human rights abuses; some of the political, social, ethical, cultural and religious issues that practitioners attempting to engage in such investigations should consider prior to formal initiation of an enquiry; and the range of interdisciplinary techniques that can now be drawn upon to locate body deposition sites.