Human Rights. Human Remains
is a research project led by Dr Claire Moon.
The project has resulted in a number of publications to date with more planned for the future, including two books and one special issue of the journal Mortality. The first book, Extraordinary Deathwork, concerns the particular and ‘extraordinary’ forms of death labour that emerged in response to mass violent death during Mexico’s so-called ‘war on drugs’. The second, entitled Human Rights, Human Remains, concentrates on the broader history, politics, practices, and ethics of forensic exhumations of mass graves. It looks at the dead body as the object of humanitarian concern and action. It asks whether, as a result of historical and contemporary humanitarian activity around the dead, we can now argue that the dead have human rights.
In support of this research, Claire undertook professional training in forensic anthropology (grave exhumation and human skeletal identification) and death management, focussing on human rights investigations, mass disasters, and the humanitarian management of the dead.
You can watch a short film about the research, entitled ‘Do the dead have human rights?’
Human Rights, Human Remains has been generously funded at various stages of its evolution by the Wellcome Trust, the Leverhulme Trust and ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. The research has informed the development of new international protocols and national and UN reports on mass grave location, protection and exhumation. In the process of conducting the research, Claire served on the advisory board of a citizen science collective of families of the disappeared in Mexico and continues to collaborate with family organisations searching for their missing relatives.