Desaparecidos
Definition
The approximately 30,000 people abducted, tortured, and killed by Argentina's military junta between 1976 and 1983, whose fates were denied by the state. The EAAF has identified more than 1,300 through skeletal analysis and DNA comparison.
- Context
- Argentina's military junta, 1976 to 1983
- Approximate number
- 30,000 abducted, tortured and killed
- Investigating body
- Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense (EAAF)
- Identified by EAAF
- More than 1,300 individuals
Common questions
What forensic methods did EAAF use to identify the desaparecidos?+
EAAF combined skeletal analysis (age, sex, and stature estimation, trauma assessment) with mitochondrial and nuclear DNA comparison against samples from surviving family members, since many victims had no antemortem dental or medical records available.
Why is the EAAF's work considered a model for other conflicts?+
It pioneered a systematic, family-centred approach to mass-grave exhumation and identification under a state that had actively concealed the killings, and its methodology and some of its personnel were later applied to identification efforts in other countries' post-conflict investigations.
Related terms
- EAAF (Equipo Argentino De Antropologia Forense)
- The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, founded in Buenos Aires in 1984 by Clyde Snow and a group of Argentine student scientists including...
- ECCC (Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia)
- The hybrid tribunal established in 2006 jointly by Cambodia and the UN to prosecute senior Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes committed between...
- ICMP (International Commission on Missing Persons)
- The international organisation that has led DNA-based identification of missing persons from the former Yugoslavia since 1996, working from a laboratory in...
- ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda)
- The United Nations ad hoc tribunal established in November 1994 to prosecute the organisers of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Operated from Arusha,...
- ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia)
- The United Nations ad hoc tribunal established in 1993 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed in the former...
- Perimortem Trauma
- Skeletal damage inflicted at or around the time of death, when the bone still retains its elastic properties. Distinguished from postmortem (after-death)...
- Primary and Secondary Graves
- In the Srebrenica context: primary graves are the original burial sites of executed victims. Secondary and tertiary graves are locations to which...
- Stover-Ryan Framework
- The 2002 ethical framework for war-zone forensic anthropology, addressing the four tensions specific to conflict-context casework: investigative pace versus survivor needs; scientific...