Missing people, migrants, identification and human rights

Abstract

The increasing volume and complexities of migratory flow has led to a range of problems such as human rights issues, public health, disease and border control, and also the regulatory processes. As result of war or internal conflicts missing person cases and management have to be regarded as a worldwide issue. On the other hand, even in peace, the issue of a missing person is still relevant. In 2007 the Italian Ministry of Interior nominated an extraordinary commissar in order to analyse and assess the total number of unidentified recovered bodies and verify the extent of the phenomena of missing persons, reported as 24,912 people in Italy (updated 31 December 2011). Of these 15,632 persons are of foreigner nationalities and are still missing. The census of the unidentified bodies revealed a total of 832 cases recovered in Italy since the year 1974. These bodies/human remains received a regular autopsy and were buried as 'corpse without name". In Italy judicial autopsy is performed to establish cause of death and identity, but odontology and dental radiology is rarely employed in identification cases. Nevertheless, odontologists can substantiate the identification through the 'biological profile' providing further information that can narrow the search to a smaller number of missing individuals even when no ante mortem dental data are available. The forensic dental community should put greater emphasis on the role of the forensic odontology as a tool for humanitarian action of unidentified individuals and best practise in human identification.