Centering Families of the Missing through the Forensics Academy
Forensic technologies—the collection and analysis of physical evidence related to crimes—play a crucial role in the pursuit of truth and justice in post-conflict settings, most notably in identifying human remains and providing evidence for criminal prosecutions, but also in supporting victims’ rights. Despite their importance, many countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions lack the resources and capacity to carry out complex forensic investigations. In response to this need, in 2018, GIJTR launched the Forensics Academy, which offers forensics trainings and exchanges in diverse conflict and post-conflict settings for a range of stakeholders, including victims’ family members, prosecutors and legal and psychosocial support practitioners. Since its launch, there have been five Forensics Academy cohorts, serving over 55 participants from more than 40 CSOs in 18 countries. The Academy gives participants access to the expertise and experience of GIJTR Consortium Partner the Forensic Anthropology
Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG). The FAFG provides hands-on training with field visits to meet victims’ families and see active excavation sites, as well as financial and technical support to implement projects in participants’ home contexts. The Academy has had transformational impacts at individual, community and organizational levels. In addition, its impact has reached the field of forensics, which within transitional justice was previously almost always limited to state-sanctioned processes to exhume and identify the bodies of the unknown dead. GIJTR has expanded this approach considerably, making forensic investigations more inclusive of family members of the missing, and more accessible to civil society actors generally through pioneering approaches. Such approaches include the collection of genetic reference samples that allow activists and families—who have few short-term prospects for the retrieval of human remains—to contribute to databases that can be used in future accountability and memorialization initiatives.
Participants in the Forensics Academy during a workshop in Guatemala in 2019.
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GIJTR’s Impact In Depth: Civil Society
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