Knowledge Production in Transitional Justice: Understanding the role of Forensic Scientists in Responding to Enforced Disappearance

• In Event: New Knowledge and Perspectives in International and Transitional Justice (ECACTJ Working Group)

Abstract

Often perpetrated by state agents or others linked to the state, enforced disappearances are a global and worsening issue. The act of disappearance exemplifies the denial that is often a feature of state crime (e.g. Cohen 2001). Forensic scientists, often working in transitional justice contexts, are key to challenging this denial by facilitating the location, recovery and exhumation of victims of enforced disappearance in contexts across the world. However, the contribution of forensic scientists and their specialised knowledge to recovering the disappeared is often overlooked (Rosenblatt 2015).

Through this work, forensic scientists play a role in responding to legacies of state crime and it is often postulated that they can contribute, to different extents, to TJ goals: providing evidence in trials, contributing information to truth commissions, facilitating broader memorialization and acknowledgement, restoration and reparation (Kovras 2023). Consequently, they can influence legal, social and political understandings of past violence alongside contributing to satisfying victims’ needs and rights. Nevertheless, while there may be an assumption that forensic science provides for an objective, factual “truth”, this overlooks the social, political, cultural, and emotional dynamics of transitional contexts (Olarte-Sierra 2022).

This paper presents the first phase of findings from our project investigating the relationship between TJ and forensic scientists through the lens of knowledge production, drawing on data collected through semi-structured interviews with forensic experts. This in order to: promote a better understanding of how ‘mid-level’ actors (Collins 2018), such as forensic experts, interact with TJ stakeholders; explore their role in knowledge production in transitional justice; and shed further light on the vital work of experts involved in efforts to recover the disappeared and challenging the silence and denial that often accompanies state crime.

Authors

• Beatrice Canossi, Queen's University Belfast

• Lauren Dempster, Queen's University Belfast