法医人类学外文文献英文Forensic anthropology and missing persons A Brazilian perspective

Forensic Anthropology Population Data Forensic anthropology and missing persons A Brazilian perspective Melina Calmon Department of Anthropology Tulane University New Orleans LA 70118 USA A R T I C L E I N F O Article history Received 4 December 2018 Received in revised form 8 March 2019 Accepted 18 March 2019 Available online 23 March 2019 Keywords Missing persons Brazil Humanitarian Forensic anthropology population data A B S T R A C T The problem of the missing persons phenomenon in Brazil in the 21st century has become apparent and the responses to the issue are still under development The relatively new fi eld of forensic anthropology and its trained professionals occupy an essential place in the investigation of cases of missing and unidentifi ed individuals The development of forensic anthropology in Brazil is unique among Latin American countries who improved their expertise during the investigations of political crimes that occurred between the 1960s and 1980s in most places The qualifi cations and the paths to become a forensic anthropologist in Brazil are different from other professionals who work in the fi eld worldwide This article addresses the issue of missing person investigations and details the work of forensic anthropologists in such cases in Brazil 2019 Elsevier B V All rights reserved 1 Introduction Although there is no single defi nition generally accepted cross culturally or across agencies the term missing person is usually associated with the disappearance of someone under suspicious circumstances However missing person also includes people whose whereabouts are unknown but where there are no concerns for that person s safety According to Hirschel and Lab 1 the term for missing person should be applied to all disappearances both voluntary and involuntary as too often the distinction between these two circumstances cannot be made Therefore missing persons may include individuals who are victims of foul play individuals whose whereabouts are unknown or individuals who have gone missing by their own accord Most research on the topic of missing persons is conducted focusing on defi ning types of missing persons and estimating their incidence Police agencies and other institutions each have their own criteria for classifying missing persons reports The decision to establish how broadly to cast the missing persons net varies from agency to agency and from country to country Many individuals who are reported missing return home within hours or days yet many others will not be located and will be classifi ed as unidentifi ed individuals who are analyzed by the medicolegal system In Brazil two distinct contexts of missing persons should be highlighted the missing persons from the political crimes during the Brazilian dictatorship era and the missing persons who disappear currently on a daily basis Forensic sciences are a crucial tool in the investigation location and identifi cation of missing persons In some cases the resolution of a missing persons case can only be obtained through a medicolegal investigation that involves unidentifi ed remains exhumations and the application of forensic anthropological analysis Some might say that the use of forensic anthropology for missing persons investigations from political crimes should follow a different approach than daily missing persons investigations However the author believes that the magnitude of the missing persons issue in Brazil makes such distinctions for how to proceed with the use of forensic anthropology hard to outline This article intends to bring to the international discussion the problem of missing persons efforts investigations and the forensic anthro pology work in Brazil 2 The numbers The estimates of those killed and missing in Latin America during the dictatorship period are widely disparate In Argentina it was estimated that 30 000 were killed while in Chile estimates ranged from 3000 to 9000 The offi cial number in Brazil ranged from 435 to 475 based on offi cial requests for restitution or compensation The Brazilian statistic excludes those missing or killed due to circumstances unrelated to political parties 2 Though the numbers of the disappeared during the dictatorship era in Brazil seem incomparable with the ones from other Latin America countries the number of the missing persons on a current context in Brazil is alarming The dimension of the problem has caught the attention of international entities such as the Interna tional Committee of the Red Cross ICRC and independent forensic teams such as the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team EAAF E mail address mcalmons tulane edu M Calmon https doi org 10 1016 j forsciint 2019 03 032 0379 0738 2019 Elsevier B V All rights reserved Forensic Science International 298 2019 425 e1 425 e6 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Forensic Science International journal homepage e f orsciint and the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team EPAF The offi cial numbers of missing persons and unidentifi ed individuals in Brazil is unknown The country does not have a unifi ed database nor standardized methodology to record cases of missing and unidenti fi ed individuals With the intention of estimating the number of missing persons cases the ICRC has done a study to account for missing person reports in Brazil 3 The study indicated that a total of 786 071 disappearances were reported between 2007 and 2017 In 2017 alone 82 684 disappearances were reported The study showed that there was no consolidation centralization or current data on missing persons in the country The number of cases registered in Brazil is contrasted against the number of disappearances in other countries Accordingtothe Amnesty International 4 approximately 75 000 people went missing in Syria between 2011 and 2016 In Colombia the National Center for Historical Memory shows that between 1958 and 2017 a total of 82 998 people went missing an equivalent to the Brazilian number in the year 2017 alone 5 The Brazilian total estimated by the ICRC study results from the compilation of disappearances originated from the Civil Police Departments reports Therefore this number only includes the disappearances that were reported to the police Haglund 6 recognizes that for someone to be reported missing they must fi rst be missed and many individuals who should have been reported missing are rather not missed Hence people whose disappear ances go unreported by family or friends are unknown to law enforcement agencies These issues mentioned above might skew the real number of missing persons cases The problem of the unknown number of cases is also apparent in the unidentifi ed individuals situation There are no offi cial statistics on the number of unidentifi ed human remains in Brazil In 2007 a study determined that 7287 individuals had been identifi ed in fi ve Brazilian states 7 If we consider that estimate the total number of unidentifi ed cases per year throughout the country would be between 10 000 14 000 3 Forensic anthropology in Brazil The development of forensic anthropology in Brazil co occurred with legal medicine The school of thought in Brazil was heavily infl uenced by Europe especially from the British Association for the Advancement of Science Section of Anthropology founded in 1822 the Soi t Ethnologique of Paris founded in 1839 the Berliner Gesellschaft F r Anthropologie Ethnologie und Urge schichte founded in 1869 and the Soci t d Anthropologie of Paris founded in 1865 8 The fi eld of forensic anthropology in Brazil is still new with its ascension in the 1990s following the explosion of forensic anthropology and archeology throughout Latin America 8 9 It is important to note that to become an offi cial expert in forensic anthropology working at a Medicolegal Institute IML one must pass the Civil or Federal Police Expert exam and be accepted and placed in a state of the federation Most IMLs in the country are under police agencies administrations with few being under the Public Safety Secretary and the offi cial experts are then considered part of the law enforcement professionals having to attend the Brazilian Police Academy ACADEPOL The limitation of forensic investigations of crimes to offi cial experts who are police staff comes from the Brazilian Code of Criminal Procedures and the Brazilian Criminal Code 9 10 Ad hoc experts can be appointed as non offi cial experts by the judicial or police authorities to participate in the forensic investigation however this practice is still uncommon with the court rarely challenging offi cial forensic experts fi ndings Professionals who work as offi cial experts in forensic anthropology have educational background and training in health disciplines namely medicine or odontology and many do not have any specifi c qualifi cations in the fi eld Generally offi cial experts might work simultaneously in medicolegal tasks performing autopsies and sometimes signing death certifi cates forensic anthropology and forensic dentistry Barring rare exceptions the vast majority of offi cial Brazilian experts operate in more than one fi eld of expertise There are no requirements to hold qualifi cations in forensic anthropology with a specialization masters or a Ph D therefore many offi cial experts only have their bachelor s degrees Some individuals with masters or doctorates degrees may have defended thesis on forensic anthropological analysis but have those degrees granted by departments of odontology or medicine Since 2014 specialization courses in forensic anthropology have been offered in Brazilian Universities offering 360 h of practical and theoretical material The fi rst specialization degree course in forensic anthropology was held in the city of Salvador hosted by UNING Ing Higher Education Unit The UNING course trained the fi rst forensic anthropology specialists team in Brazil and three of its members are offi cial experts at the Salvador IML offering one of the best trained anthropological services in the country Since 2014 the UNIFESP Federal University of S o Paulo has offered a specialization course in forensic anthropology and human rights Some offi cial experts in forensic anthropology in Brazil have participated in these courses while already perform ing forensic analysis as their professional duty These courses serve as an in depth study of the discipline exploring more than the classes provided by ACADEPOL on the subject and adding to other short courses such as the ones provided by the Interna tional Committee of the Red Cross The services of forensic anthropology when present at the IMLs are often located in the state capitals The only state that offers anthropological identifi cation in cities besides its capital is S o Paulo 11 Most anthropological work is done exclusively inside a laboratory rather than on site Consequently the removal and transport of skeletal and biological material are usually not overlooked by a forensic anthropologist expert The lack of preservation of scenes and the absence of forensic anthropology experts in the search and recovery of human remains the defi ciency in specialized personnel and the inadequacy of qualifi cations underscore the necessity of further work in the standardization and development of forensic anthropology in Brazil 11 Many initiatives were created to discuss the new steps of forensic anthropology and promote the development of the fi eld Among those initiatives three are particularly noteworthy The Legal Medicine Center Centro de Medicina Legal CEMEL at the College of Medicine in Ribeir o Preto at the University of S o Paulo FMRP USP the Center for Forensic Archaeology and Anthropolo gy Centro de Arqueologia e Antropologia Forense CAAF at UNIFESP and ABRAF Brazilian Association of Forensic Anthropol ogy CEMEL has established a Forensic Anthropology Laboratory created through a scientifi c partnership between FMRP USP and the University of Sheffi eld in the United Kingdom 12 where it received a grant from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Offi ce Global Opportunities Fund CAAF has a partnership with the Department of Justice and The National Offi ce for Human Rights 11 and focuses on the examination of remains from the dictatorship era in Brazil further discussed in the following section ABRAF was founded in 2012 with the goal of facilitating knowledge fl ow between forensic anthropology practitioners around the country The association not only works to connect professionals but also to discuss and debate the needs of the fi eld in Brazil ABRAF has been responsible for hosting forensic anthropology conferences in the country allowing students researchers and professionals to present their work to peers and 425 e2 M Calmon Forensic Science International 298 2019 425 e1 425 e6 colleagues extending the network and providing a space for the exchange of experiences and ideas Efforts in the validation of methodologies for the assessment of the biological profi le and human identifi cation have increased in Brazil Studies have been conducted in the determination of sex and ancestry 13 17 facial reconstruction 18 human identifi ca tion 19 21 and age estimation 16 22 23 G rka and Plens 24 provide a bibliographic meta analysis work on Brazilian publica tions in forensic anthropology Their work is an overview of the discipline in Brazil and analyzes the advances directions and perspectives in scientifi c production According to their study they concluded that there was a signifi cant increase in scientifi c publication between 2007 and 2017 with the research being centralized and lead by the dentistry fi eld with the leading research center being USP University of S o Paulo The primary research focus is positive human identifi cation and the most common scope of research was the proposal of new methods to identify human remains and to determine sex in the skeleton The author additionally found that only 59 of the research was published in collaboration of at least two different institutions 24 The non existent communication that persists between research centers in Brazil is also highlighted by Cunha et al 25 on their fi rst of its kind study providing a description of the identifi ed skeletal collections in the country The authors acknowledge that research centers in Brazil are generally only aware of the collections present in their own centers and had no awareness of other reference collections across the country Their report is imperative for the fi eld and highlights the existence of skeletal collections that can be used to expand our knowledge on Brazilian population and variation The study of these collections can be used to validate methodologies and create a database of morphological data that can aid in the investigations for positive identifi cation of unidentifi ed individuals 4 Forensic anthropology and missing persons investigations In 1992 the Torture Never Again Group Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais GTNM RJ a non governmental organization founded by families of the dead and missing after the military dictatorship in Brazil 26 created a forensic interdisciplinary team composed of physical anthropologists from the Public Health National School Escola Nacional de Sa de P blica FIOCRUZ and from the National Museum Museu Nacional UFRJ 27 The goal of this team was to search for the missing persons between the years of 1964 and 1984 in Brazil Based on the studies of Coimbra et al 27 the fi rst challenge the researchers faced was the opening of the mass grave in the Ricardo de Albuquerque Cemetery in the city of Rio de Janeiro According to reports from the GTNM RJ the cemetery was thoughtto contain fourteenindividualswhowere arrestedand killed during the military era 26 29 The second challenge was to deal with the bureaucracies of working alongside law enforcement agencies something that the researchers on the team had never faced before Additionally the team also had diffi culties in identifying the human remains due to the comingled set in the mass grave The anthropological and archeological techniques methodologies and analyses were not suffi cient to differentiate the historical human remains from the forensically signifi cant ones 27 Moreover there was no funding to continue the investigation and the addition of new research techniques and technologies for the identifi cation of these skeletons With the fi nancial blockade the expected results from the exhumation were not achieved Although the investigation failed in its objectives this fi rst experience with forensic anthropology and archeology in Brazil was imperative for the development of the fi eld in the country The knowledge gained through the necessity of structural changes in the discipline shed light into the urgency of the applications of forensic anthropology in humanitarian investigations The Department of Justice and the National Truth Commission engaged in partnership with the CAAF to analyze the remains of clandestine mass graves in the Dom Bosco Cemetery in Perus S o Paulo related to buried remains from 1946 to 1988 11 12 28 The exhumation occurred in 2002 and the team analyzed circumstances of death and aided with clarifi cations about the human rights violations that had occurred 29 The Perus Working Group GTP was then created to examine additional remains exhumed from the same cemetery In 2017 it was reported that of 1049 skeletons discovered in 1990 1029 have yet to be investigated their identities and causes of death remain unknown 2 Yet another confl ict site wasputunderinvestigation the Araguaia and a groupwasformed to analyzethe remainsfromthesite the AraguaiaWorkingGroup GTA 12 The GTA has been responsible for exhuming analyzing and reporting fi ndings from the skeletal remains recovered on the site 30 32 The work of these three groups is similar and they share expert members amongst themselves In 2009 the Brazilian government decided to follow the example of other countries in Latin A