Among the thousands of works in the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Library’s collections, there are a growing number of legal articles, as well as anthropology and interdisciplinary studies, on humanitarian forensics and the protection of the dead. While international humanitarian law (IHL) provides a normative framework for the protection of the dead in times of armed conflict, anthropology not only reveals the underlying cultural and social aspects that inform legal protection and humanitarian action, but also explains why legal norms and ethical dilemmas around violent death may resonate across cultures. The Library’s recent acquisition Anthropology of Violent Death: Theoretical Foundations for Forensic Humanitarian Action is a valuable resource that exemplifies this intersection. The book outlines concepts and theories about posthumous dignity and remembrance of the dead in violent contexts, including armed conflict.

Most chapters in the book explore how different types of violence, including systemic violence, affect the dead, the missing and their communities in different ways in conflict and post-conflict situations. The volume explains that this is where forensic humanitarian action operates, bridging the disciplines of law, science, archaeology, history, sociology and anthropology with humanitarian principles in order to properly manage the dead, support their families and ensure the respect of specific cultural and religious practices.

The book guides humanitarians in the exploration of their responsibilities beyond the purely legal and technical realms. Its eighteen chapters are not divided thematically but can be classified into four categories: chapters that define and trace the emergence of key concepts such as forensic anthropology, posthumous dignity and violent death (1, 2, 14, 18); chapters that highlight the necessity of cultural awareness and interdisciplinary collaboration (6, 9, 15, 16); chapters that present sociological analyses on violence, funerary rites and types of mourning (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 13); and chapters that focus on existing legal protections and guidelines for the management of dead bodies (11, 12, 17).

The book consistently advocates for interdisciplinarity and its ability to converge disciplines and compare socio-cultural case studies. This may seem more evident in Chapters 6, 9, 15 and 16, which address methodologies, disciplinary ethics and the genealogy of forensic anthropology in humanitarian contexts. These chapters stress the importance, for all disciplines concerned with the protection of the dead, of being culturally sensitive and collaborative, pushing the boundaries of what is conceived as “forensic”, “anthropological” and “humanitarian”.

Chapter 6 describes destruction, mass violence and human remains as a “total social phenomenon”, since it stirs deep political, social, cultural and religious tensions, hence requiring different types of expertise. Studies about large-scale exhumation have highlighted the variety of actors that need to be involved and the conflicting agendas they often bring to affected communities. Chapter 16 offers a practical solution to this challenge: through an overview of their ongoing work in Uganda, the authors demonstrate how integrating ethnographic inquiry into forensic intervention allows communities to assess whether and how forensic methods align with their needs, emphasizing the importance of an approach that centres survivors and families of the deceased. According to the authors of the chapter, while humanitarians have oriented forensic science toward the needs and interests of survivors, they have not yet fully integrated into their work the power of ethnographic knowledge and methods, or contemporary theories of culture. For example, it has been proven that collaboration between different disciplines can avoid forensic practitioners harming communities by reopening matters deemed resolved or carrying out exhumations in ways that bring forth more conflict. In other cases, when the dead are not treated according to cultural norms, their “liminal status” may be regarded as unresolved by their communities.

The volume emphasizes how forensic scientists and humanitarians are called to confront ethical and psychosocial concerns for survivors going through the protracted identification process or the politicization of human remains during ongoing violence, as illustrated by Chapter 14, “Dealing with Bad Death in Post-Conflict Societies: Forensic Devices, Burials of Exhumed Remains, and Mourning Processes in Peru”. The Quechua in Peru refer to deaths due to conflict, extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances as “bad deaths” that defy cultural ideas of posthumous dignity or closure, prolonging the mourning process. Therefore, concerned Quechua communities felt compelled to create cultural mechanisms and rituals to restore a sense of respect.

Chapter 8 also reflects on the nuances of mourning the dead, arguing that identification and recovery do not always lead to closure. Even after funerary rites are performed, closure is neither guaranteed nor necessarily desired, as the bereaved may want to maintain a spiritual or cultural connection with the dead. Sometimes, this relationship between the living and the dead or missing victims of political violence transforms itself into an enduring bond as a coping mechanism. Similarly, Chapter 3, “Continuing Bonds and Social Memory: Absence–Presence”, underscores the psychological aspects of mourning and the support that it necessitates, requiring humanitarians to “improve their sensitivity, emotional intelligence, and multifaith religious literacy”.Footnote ¹

A substantial portion of the book investigates how violence continues to manifest after death. These parts often cite and resonate with the influential works of Michel Foucault, Achille Mbembe, Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler, whose theories show how power dictates who may live, die or exist in liminal states, through carceral logics that confine and marginalize. This is what Mbembe calls “necropolitics” or the politics of death.Footnote ² Conflict and mass violence particularly normalize dire living conditions where people are reduced to being socially and politically dead, and where survival itself is a form of resistance.

Chapter 4, “The Archaeology of Disappearance”, exposes the necropolitical efforts to obliterate material traces of systemic violence and the memory of those who suffered it. The author explains that the annihilation of people and the disappearance of their traces is a phenomenon particular to certain bureaucracies and new technologies – from the use of concentration camps to nuclear weapons – that perpetuate an organized political economy of disappearance aimed at concealing and dispersing evidence of power itself. The chapter concludes that, by contrast, forensic archaeology works within an epistemology of appearance: it can unearth hidden histories, materialize traces and expose strategies of disappearance, thereby revealing truths that were once concealed. As repeatedly brought forward throughout the book, the chapter demonstrates the unique contribution of forensics to documenting IHL and human rights violations and supporting post-conflict justice.

Ultimately, power transcends biological death, continuing to shape the status, management and remembrance of the deceased. For example, Chapter 13 illustrates how the corpses of different parties to the Spanish Civil War did not receive the same burial practices or commemoration. This was referred to as “funerary apartheid”, as part of a movement denouncing Francoist crimes.

Chapter 15, “Migrant Death and the Ethics of Visual Documentation in Forensic Anthropology”, provides one of the many practical examples of the ubiquity and posthumous reach of violence presented in the book. Even forensic anthropology has engaged in the unequal treatment of human remains – in particular, the chapter critiques, through examples, the ethical norms that shape visual documentation practices around migrant deaths. Forensic anthropology has often abused photographs of migrants’ skeletal remains, bodies in various states of decomposition, and personal effects. In light of this, the authors advocate for a universal and revised ethical code for forensics in humanitarian contexts that accounts for socio-political inequalities, rooted in values of diversity and inclusion, aware of the realities of fallibility and bias, conscious of historical and socio-cultural contexts that shape methods, theories and outcomes, and attuned to specific practices like visual documentation.

Ultimately, the authors ask: what is the role of forensic anthropologists in documenting violence and its intersection with systemic oppression? How can a reimagined humanitarian forensic anthropology tell fuller, more transformative stories? Chapter 9, “Whose Humanitarianism? Whose Forensic Anthropology?”, deliberates on such questions, denouncing forensic humanitarianism for perpetuating colonialist logics with narrow definitions of violence that disregard the lived experiences of the oppressed. Through compelling case studies, the chapter illustrates that unseen forms of violence and systemic oppression are etched into skeletal remains. For example, lack of access to health care is written across the remains of marginalized communities, with stress markers and pathological conditions being clearly visible. By recalling the motto of disability and neurodiversity movements, “Nothing about us without us”, the authors argue for the recentring of victims and survivors of armed conflicts and situations of violence. This underscores that forensics must recognize the full spectrum of violence in order to reshape its influence on casework, research, policies and education.

This naturally raises questions about how we remember the deceased and the ways in which power determines whose lives are deemed more deserving of grief. In this light, Chapter 8 urges forensic humanitarianism to be attuned to the potential conflicts between personal mourning and broader social or national narratives. It calls for greater attention to the relationship between the dead and the living, which can continually reshape our understanding of life, death and history, sometimes in ways that heal, and other times in ways that harm. Chapter 10, “Battlefields and Killed in Action: Tombs of the Unknown Soldier and Commemoration”, recalls that commemorative ceremonies after the First World War gathered people around loss, forging communities of mourners. Yet these communities were subsequently often excluded and ignored, as in the case of veterans or mothers whose personal grief was overshadowed by national mourning ceremonies that served to further a political agenda. National mourning both consoles and marginalizes, proving that remembrance requires a nuanced approach. As recalled in Chapter 1, some types of remembrance can be instrumentalized to regenerate cycles of violence.Footnote ³

Moral standards of posthumous dignity, common to many cultures, have shaped the existing legal protection framework, from international human rights law to IHL, as discussed in Chapter 2, “The Posthumous Dignity of Dead Persons”. Chapter 17 illustrates this with the example of the Guiding Principles for the Dignified Management of the Dead in Humanitarian Emergencies and to Prevent Them Becoming Missing Persons (Guiding Principles).Footnote ⁴ From 2018 to 2021, the ICRC’s Missing Persons Project and its Forensic Unit, together with the “Right to Truth, Truth(s) through Rights” project, convened meetings of experts and consultations to draft the Guiding Principles, which, while they are non-binding recommendations, are an essential read for practitioners. Most importantly, Chapter 17 concludes that the Guiding Principles do not define dignified management but rather

Chapter 12, authored by two ICRC legal advisers, develops this line of thought from a legal perspective, showing how Islamic law, drawing from sacred texts, codifies specific rules for managing the dead in conflict. Despite having different sources, IHL and Islamic law can complement each other, influencing the behaviour of parties to conflict in a way that fosters greater respect for the dead in Muslim contexts. Chapter 11 similarly advocates for continuous collaboration among stakeholders and communities in order to better understand protection and implement legal norms with a “do no harm” approach, thus strengthening the application of humanitarian principles.

In conclusion, as stated by UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions Morris Tidball-Binz, “by helping fulfil the obligations towards the dead, we reassert our own humanity”.Footnote ⁶ Anthropology of Violent Death therefore speaks to the core principles of humanitarianism, reflecting on several decades of advancements in forensic anthropology.

Beyond its utility for practitioners, this book offers an opportunity for all readers to engage with expert perspectives across diverse disciplines, and the editors have skilfully curated an interdisciplinary dialogue that gathers theories, practices and case studies. Finally, the book encourages the scientific community, authorities and justice systems to critically reflect on their practices, which could in turn lead to social, cultural and political change.