Operating Under Political Limitations as a Forensic Anthropologist in the International Courts

          Forensic anthropologists are important experts in the international justice system when seeking reparations for victims of political violence and genocide (Ubelaker et al. 2019). Their work to locate and excavate clandestine graves to then identify the individuals in them and decipher what happened to them by analyzing their bones provides strong scientific evidence when building a case for the international courts. From the skeleton, the identities and physical traumas of a person killed in a genocide are enough to give justice and reparations to the violated communities (Fleischmann 2016). However, several politically motivated roadblocks that forensic anthropologists encounter while documenting human rights abuses can prevent their work from being ethically carried out. Because political violence is often state-sponsored, if the leaders who facilitated the war crimes are still in power, they will not allow forensic anthropologists to conduct their investigations against them. Even if there is a new government in place, the international courts are heavily influenced by the nation-states that fund them, leaving the victims of powerful countries vulnerable to unchecked violence due to their world standing or their allies’ world standings. Because the jurisdiction of the main international courts is not clearly defined and is binding only if the involved countries agree to uphold their decisions, the likelihood of reparations being made and accountability taking place is low. These forms of corruption directly impact a forensic anthropologist’s ability to collect evidence, testify, and ensure that their work is meaningfully interpreted to protect human rights in the future.

          There are several questions this research paper will address, and it will do so within the context of the Russo-Ukraine War that began in 2023 with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine. How can a forensic anthropologist make sure their work will penetrate this lack of jurisdiction and actually prevent further human rights violations from taking place? Is there a way that these courts can have a viable influence without infringing on the sovereignty of member states? Can each United Nations state have equal power in International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court cases so that richer countries cannot wriggle out of a guilty sentence? What can organizations like the International Commission on Missing Persons do to collect evidence of war crimes and genocide in instances where the country in question refuses to cooperate, or if the government is the one committing the crimes? How can the international courts, and the countries that support them, protect the rights of these organizations to document these atrocities? In what ways can a forensic anthropologist balance their personal and discipline’s ethics code within a politically corrupt context? While these questions require more work than the field of forensic anthropology can address, acknowledging these issues will allow future anthropologists to adjust their methods and advocacy to better meet their goal of protecting human rights and preventing forthcoming crimes against humanity.

Field Recovery Process of Human Remains

          There are three main components that dictate a forensic anthropologist’s actions while in the field: search and locate, document, and collect (Dirkmaat 2012). The protocol for locating burial sites depends on the climate, environment, and terrain, but usually begins by searching for disturbances in the ground like depressions, increased bug activity, and unusual plant growth. Anthropologists use a number of tools to assist them in the discovery process, such as ground penetrating radar (GPR), light detection and radar (LiDAR), satellite imagery, and less technological methods like site survey, backhoe digging, and cadaver dogs. Once a site is located, a site map is created through evidence documentation. Collecting notes, photographs, videos, grave measurements, and recording environmental proximity is essential in documenting context, position, and condition. From this information, the forensic anthropologist can preliminarily observe potential age, sex, trauma, and rate of decomposition, although these identification techniques are most accurate when conducted in a laboratory setting. The combination of determining age, sex, stature, and population affinity is summarized as the biological profile and is how identification is confirmed. The final step of fieldwork is to collect the human remains and any associated material evidence by detaching the body from the ground, mud, or roots if necessary and bagging the bones, either collectively or individually. Covering these bags with a sheet will prevent the sun or other elements from destroying evidence. The individual is labeled with a case number, date, and a list of items to be transported to a laboratory with an established chain of custody.

          In situations of genocide or war, the process is largely similar, with the added factor that mass grave exhumation usually involves commingled remains, high volumes of individuals that need identifying, and financial obstacles (Fleischman 2016). Too often, decedents cannot be distinguished from each other, or the remains are not intact enough to build a biological profile to allow identification. In these cases, DNA and dental records may hold the key to identification, although DNA analysis is expensive and obtaining dental records can be difficult in conflict-torn regions. In this case, collecting cultural evidence will assist. In Still Life With Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Hagerty 2023), forensic and social anthropologists found that interviewing family members to learn about the life of a victim provided alternative methods of identification. For example, learning that one person broke their arm as a child or had a specific surgery meant that the anthropologist would see evidence of this on the skeleton. Knowing if another person had a pathological condition could suggest identification based on the condition of the remains. Not all the information a forensic anthropologist finds helpful is postmortem data, and it is a necessary addition to identification when working with large numbers of remains.

International Institutions

          The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) is an international organization created to assist countries in locating and identifying missing and displaced people due to war, political violence, natural disasters, and genocide. It works in collaboration with governments, other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), justice institutions, and family members of the missing. One of the main aspects of the ICMP is the Archaeology and Anthropology Division, tasked with analyzing archaeological technology to identify potential excavation sites, recovering human remains, documenting the physical and environmental contexts in which they were found, and performing DNA tests when applicable. Recording the entire recovery process, beginning with detecting excavation sites and ending when the individual is identified, supports criminal investigations and ultimately endeavors to provide closure to the families and communities of victims. This organization has done extensive archaeological and forensic anthropological work in Iraq, Syria, post-9/11 New York City, and Ukraine.

          Since 2016, the ICMP has worked in partnership with the International Criminal Court (ICC), the United Nations entity that prosecutes persons for war crimes, genocide, aggression, and crimes against humanity. These individuals are usually heads of government or leaders of political groups. When sufficient evidence of war crimes is found to be unveiled, the court either gives the suspect a summons to appear or an arrest warrant, after which a trial will occur with the burden of proof being on the prosecutor. Among the casework within these trials are the testimonies of forensic anthropologists, who deliver information about the location of the remains, the circumstances surrounding the time of death of the individuals in question, and any other material evidence that sheds light on the manner of death of the victims. Once all evidence is put forth by both anthropologists and other experts, and assuming the ICC finds the individual guilty, a prison sentence is carried out in a host country that agrees to uphold the ICC’s decisions. As of today, 125 countries are state parties to the ICC, including all countries within the European Union and excluding the United States of America.

Unlike the ICC, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is concerned with disputes involving nation-states, rather than individuals. Instead of a prison sentence, a guilty verdict of genocide or war crimes will require the country to complete the necessary reparations to give justice to the impacted communities. This international law is binding to all parties (Szafarz 2023). Institutions like the ICJ and ICC were created to publish a standard set of norms that all member countries must maintain to promote peace and security, protect human rights, and facilitate social and economic development (Chimene 2021). A forensic anthropologist uses their knowledge of skeletal remains similarly in the ICJ as they would in ICC cases, but the evidence is used to prove a nation’s role in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide rather than a single individual. The ICJ is important for restructuring a country’s leadership after large-scale violations occur and draws on the support of other countries to intervene when necessary to protect human rights from being further abused. A verdict of reparations will require funds to be allocated toward humanitarian aid, recovery, infrastructure, and new laws to be upheld by new leadership.

          Sovereignty is the idea that countries make their own decisions to govern themselves without too much outside interference (Karns and Mingst 2015; Gutner 2017). International law is meant to supplement domestic law and assist in preserving a nation-state’s sovereignty. In theory, international law is powerful enough to prevent world leaders from violating human rights for fear of repercussion. Enforcing the decisions of the international courts relies on the goodwill of member states since there is no international police system to regulate international law. States can opt out of the court’s jurisdiction at any time for any reason, leaving international law weak. Because of this, countries rarely are punished if they violate human rights laws, especially if they have a strong political and economic presence on the world scene (Rom et al. 2022).

Political Violence in Ukraine

          Concerning Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and subsequent war crimes committed against Ukrainians in the almost four years after, forensic anthropological methods are increasingly vital in investigating human rights violations (Shevchuk et al. 2025). As of August 2025, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) documents that at least 13,883 civilians, including 726 children, have been killed by the Russian military since February 2022. These numbers do not include casualties from the Russian and Ukrainian military forces, which are estimated to be several hundred thousand people on both sides. Because Ukraine is still an active warzone, conducting forensic examination is challenging and dangerous, and proves to be a monumental task for the future, as millions of people are affected by this invasion.  The number of missing persons is rising as deportation, detention, abduction, and mass murder have been reported of both civilians and combatants. The ICMP has been assisting the government of Ukraine since April 2022 to account for the tens of thousands of missing persons. Many of these individuals have been found in mass graves, thanks to skeletal DNA analyses by the Archaeology and Anthropology Division.

          Unfortunately, even with NGOs like the ICMP working tirelessly to unveil evidence of Putin and Russia’s war crimes, the international courts in which the evidence is presented ultimately fail to provide justice to the victims and prevent future human rights violations from occurring (Rom et al. 2022). For example, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin back in March of 2023 for abducting Ukrainian children and bringing them to the Russian Federation (ICC Press Release 2023). Russia is not a member of the ICC and thus, not legally obligated to turn in President Putin, and the ICC has no police force to detain Putin. The 125 countries that are members of the ICC are legally bound to arrest Putin if he enters their territory. Notably, the United States is not one of those member countries and has no such requirement, going as far as hosting Putin on U.S. soil to discuss the terms of the war in Ukraine. Essentially, as long as Putin does not leave his territory or the territory of his allies, he remains more powerful than the ICC and above international law.

Combatting Court Limitations as Forensic Anthropologists

          The limited extent to which international law can be upheld is disheartening to the work of forensic anthropologists who spend years conducting fieldwork to build cases for international courts. At a certain point, it is not ethical to ask these professionals to risk their personal and mental safety in documenting human rights abuses if the retribution process cannot make it past an arrest warrant. However, it is even more unethical to stop forensic anthropological investigation because this allows yet another facet in which the aggressors will not face any consequences. Even if the courts cannot protect human rights and prevent violations, the work of forensic anthropologists and other experts still provides an outlet for victimized communities to be seen and to project their struggles to the public. Associations like the ICMP and the International Committee of the Red Cross advocate in collaboration with states and other organizations to obtain evidence of human rights violations (Ubelaker et al. 2019; Sullivan 2023). If this information cannot be used in a trial due to corrupt interpretations of international policy, broadcasting it to the public will replace the international courts with a court of public opinion. Anthropologists cannot bear the responsibility of fixing the political state of the world, but they can partner as associations with other scholars, international organizations, and citizen-led societies to put immense pressure on the governments that are preventing the law from being enforced. Global advocacy, led by academics and professionals and supported by the civil public, can be enough to force reparations to be carried out.

          International courts could have the capacity to enforce their rulings, but it would require the agreement of all involved countries to amend the constitutions on which they were created. For one, installing an international police force for the ICC would allow arrest warrants to be followed through, which in turn would lead to trials and convictions. Careful legislation would prevent this police force from infringing on the sovereignty of the countries in question while still bringing perpetrators to justice. It is likely that many countries are opposed to the creation of an international police force, so the legal actions that can be taken by this police force must only be authorized in the event that the ICC issues an arrest warrant. While this may seem an extreme measure, when taken correctly and as minimally as possible, the international courts and countries that support them can increase the protection of human rights (Karns and Mingst 2015; Gutner 2017; Chimene 2021). A large issue concerning identifying and preventing genocide is that extreme measures are not taken when the crimes being alleged are the most extreme of all. Real consequences will act as a preventative for crimes against humanity to occur.

          Because of the unlikely that a decision on par with this one will be reached, especially not before countless other human rights violations occur, forensic anthropologists must continue to collaborate with organizations like the ICMP to document the ways in which political violence appears on the skeleton. Anthropologists can increase their efforts in education and training to perfect the methods used in mass recovery and identification, focusing first on closure for the families and communities before turning to international courts. Global recognition of these organizations’ missions will expand the resources available to be spent on locating missing persons and ultimately allow for stronger cases. To do this, widespread use of social media and news articles will be vital to spreading information and gaining international attention. In the absence of enforceable legal protection, the people with the expertise to document war crime occurrences will need to work unwaveringly to leave no doubt about what is happening and what needs to be done about it to acquire justice.

Conclusion

          Forensic anthropology will always be a vital tool in documenting and identifying human rights violations. Even if another genocide were never to occur again, anthropologists would never be able to identify every past victim of political violence due to the sheer volume, lack of resources, government restrictions, and jurisdiction issues. Unfortunately, there are several instances of human rights violations occurring throughout the world, whether it be in Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, or the United States. The future of forensic anthropology in humanitarian crises depends on strict protocol, reliable methods, emerging technologies, and sufficient funds. While the success of the forensic anthropological research is not contingent on the capabilities of the international courts, adapting these global avenues will only increase the protection of human rights and allow a better outlet for the anthropological data. There are several limitations that cannot be safely overcome, such as the hierarchy of power concerning richer countries on the world scene, or the reluctance of authoritarian regimes to allow war crime documentation to take place. However, an expert understanding of the locating, documenting, and collecting processes in field recovery, knowledge about building the biological profile, and effective public awareness are all things that forensic anthropologists can do to operate successfully under a politically charged system.