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AbstractThis article has three parts. First, it identifies, defines and characterises a distinctive trend in modern humanitarianism: that of 'forensic humanitarianism'. Forensic humanitarianism is often deployed in the wake of atrocity to answer two questions: who are the dead, and how were they killed? These questions have been addressed in diverse contexts with the aim of establishing accountability for atrocities and identifying and returning the dead to their families. Examples include the investigation of the crimes of Argentina's junta, the trial for genocide of Guatemala's former President Rios Montt, the return of human remains to families of the dead in the former‐Yugoslavia, and the exhumation of clandestine civil war graves in Spain. Forensic humanitarianism is distinguished by two imperatives that are characteristic of humanitarianism more broadly: adjudicative and ameliorative. These imperatives manifest in the ways in which forensic humanitarianism plays a critical role in justice for atrocity and addresses human suffering. Second, the article historicises the emergence of forensic humanitarianism, showing that it has been shaped by the conjunction of four particular and related histories: humanitarian, legal, political and scientific. Third, and finally, the article asks whether, as a consequence of the practice of forensic humanitarianism, we can argue that the dead, now, can be understood to have human rights.

Forensic anthropology makes particular professional claims – scientific, probative, humanitarian, historical, political and deterrent – which attempt to finalise interpretations of the past. However, I argue that these claims conceal a range of contests and conflicts around the social, political, legal and scientific significance of human remains. I look at the ways in which forensic work is embedded within a network of artefacts, actors and institutions that have different stakes in the interpretation of the past. I analyse conflicts over human remains by positing them as 'boundary objects' with agency, in which a number of communities are invested and show how forensic knowledge does not finalise, but interacts with social, political and historical interpretations of past violence in ways that are both conflicted and unpredictable.

This article argues that the forms through which violence and atrocity are expressed – legal, statistical and testimonial – are important objects of analysis because credo is manifest in form, and an examination of form reveals something about the relationship between the 'world view' of human rights organizations and the 'styles of thought' that shape and inform their representations. The article considers what the discursive forms that seem indigenous to human rights and human rights advocacy both express (legalism, scientism) and repress (historicism), and discusses ways in which these forms of representation potentially facilitate and inhibit action.

Contemporary debate about compensation for past wrongs turns on the assumption that state reparation benefits the victims of atrocity by acknowledging harm and ameliorating victim suffering. Indeed, much recent theoretical and practical work has concurred to establish reparation to victims of state crimes as a cornerstone of human rights. However, this article argues that reparation can also function to placate victim demands for criminal justice and to regulate the range of political and historical meanings with which the crimes of the past are endowed. This is most evident in transitional political contexts in which gestures of reparation are usually concomitant with the inauguration of new political orders, and formal investigations of past atrocity are conditioned by the balancing of the political demands of new and old regimes. This article argues that in such contexts, state reparation can work to control social suffering with the consequence that it sometimes intensifies rather than alleviates it. To evidence this claim, the article investigates the refusal of reparations by the victims towards whom it is addressed, with reference to Argentina's Madres de Plaza de Mayo. This analysis of their refusal demonstrates how victim groups make important challenges to some of the core assumptions in the field, reveals internal inconsistencies within the analytical architecture of the scholarly and professional discourse, and indicates the ways in which reparations carry political, and not just palliative, significance.

This article enquires into the narration of reconciliation in South Africa and its political implications. It scrutinizes the subjects, objects and material practices that flow from the reconciliation story. The investigation turns on two crucial assumptions: (a) that discourse is an ideological system of meaning that constitutes and naturalizes the subjects and objects of political life, and (b) that narrative is a special discursive form, the structural features of which have specific political effects that are not illuminated by a more general discourse analytic approach. A narrative perspective is important because the TRC explicitly undertook the task of telling a story about South Africa's transition from past violence to future reconciliation, and argued that storytelling was fundamental to catharsis, healing, and reconciliation on an individual and a national level. Narrative theory renders more specifically applicable some of the general claims of political discourse analysis; while the insights of political discourse analysis highlight the political contexts and effects of governing narratives to which most narrative theory, on its own, is blind. The combination of these two theoretical premises furnishes a powerful approach to understanding the story about reconciliation told by the TRC, and its political implications.

This article responds empirically to the question posed by Stan Cohen about "why, when faced by knowledge of others' suffering and pain—particularly the suffering and pain resulting from what are called 'human rights violations'—does 'reaction' so often take the form of denial, avoidance, passivity, indifference, rationalisation or collusion?". Our context is Mexico's "war on drugs." Since 2006 this "war" has claimed the lives of around 240,000 Mexican citizens and disappeared around 60,000 others. Perpetrators include organized criminal gangs and state security services. Violence is pervasive and widely reported. Most people are at risk. Our study is based on qualitative interviews and focus groups involving 68 "ordinary Mexicans" living in five different Mexican cities which have varying levels of violence. It investigates participant proximity to the victims and the psychological defense mechanisms they deploy to cope with proximity to the violence. We found that 62 of our participants knew, directly or indirectly, one or more people who had been affected. We also found one dominant rationalization (defense mechanism) for the violence: that the victims were "involved in something" (drugs or organized crime) and therefore "deserved their fate." This echoes prevailing state discourses about the violence. We argue that the discourse of "involved" is a discourse of denial that plays three prominent roles in a highly violent society in which almost no‐one is immune: it masks state violence, stigmatizes the victims, and sanctions bystander passivity. As such, we show how official and individual denial converge, live, and reproduce, and play a powerful role in the perpetuation of violence.

Los derechos humanos de los muertos no han sido reconocidos ni establecidos. En un mundo donde se asume que sólo los seres humanos vivos tienen derechos vigentes, plantear esta cuestión sugiere la propia validez de la pregunta. Sin embargo, los muertos tienen una importancia social innegable. La estela de muerte se extiende debido a los crímenes de Estado, la violencia criminal o los crímenes de guerra. Diversas regiones del planeta registran hechos recientes o pasados: en las fronteras de Europa o la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México; en países como Argentina, Chile, México, Congo, Ruanda, Sierra Leona, Filipinas, Bosnia y España. Las víctimas pueden estar desaparecidas o no ser reconocidas. Así como sería un disparate sugerir que los muertos pueden ser totalmente investidos con derechos humanos, puesto que la mayoría sería inaplicable, se puede argumentar que en los principios jurídicos, códigos legales y prácticas forenses, los muertos han sido concebidos como portadores de al menos un derecho humano residual: el derecho humano a la dignidad.