Analysing the impact of legal and procedural frameworks on the socio-cultural and political dynamics of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances.

Autor: Dempsey N; Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University, 65 Kavanagh Street, Southbank, Victoria 3006, Australia. Electronic address: nick.dempsey@monash.edu., Sarkar R; Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University, 65 Kavanagh Street, Southbank, Victoria 3006, Australia. Electronic address: reena.sarkar1@monash.edu., Bassed R; Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University, 65 Kavanagh Street, Southbank, Victoria 3006, Australia. Electronic address: richard.bassed@vifm.org.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Forensic science international [Forensic Sci Int] 2025 Jan; Vol. 366, pp. 112305. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Nov 20.
DOI: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2024.112305
Abstrakt: The remains of unlawfully killed individuals can provide evidence concerning human rights violations. The intricate challenges of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances can complicate legal and procedural processes. These cases often present indicators of suspicious circumstances, necessitating specialised investigative approaches to ascertain the circumstance and cause of death as well as potential human rights violations. This review explores the legal and procedural dimensions of handling the remains of individuals who have been unlawfully killed, critically examining the implementation of legal instruments and their impact on the socio-cultural and political landscape regarding cases of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances. This study utilised a Python-based web scraper, with an HTML parsing library to aggregate articles on three themes of 1) International law, humanitarian law and laws protecting human remains 2), protection of human remains in cases of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances and 3), Considerations of socio-cultural, psychosocial factors in the protection of human remains and institutional failures. The programming-based method for locating articles is innovative, and the search covered both English and Spanish languages. This review establishes the tension between psychosocial/cultural requirements and legal practice, and describes community mechanisms such as social services, mental health support for affected families, and citizen initiatives. By emphasising the gap between legal standards and practical execution, the study highlights the need to refine legal guidance and strengthen procedural compliance to uphold the dignity of the deceased and ensure accountability for violations of the right to life.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.
(Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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