Luis Fondebrider
Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF)

In the mid-1980s, when several Latin American countries began to investigate their recent past after years of political violence, the need to know what happened to the region's 300,000 disappeared became a key component of the political transition.

Argentina was the first country in the region to begin the process in 1984 through the creation of an official Truth Commission and the work of the judiciary, which established responsibility for the crimes of the 1976-1983 military regime that resulted in the disappearance of about 10,000 people.

Forensic archaeology and anthropology, two sciences that had hardly been applied or even heard of in the country before, had a fundamental role to play in this search for truth and justice. The need to exhume hundreds of bodies from clandestine graves to analyze and identify them and establish the cause of death required an alternative to state coroners, who had neither the required expertise nor the trust of the victims' relatives.The solution was to create an independent, autonomous body that would apply international research standards to the investigation and gain the support and trust of the families. It is in this context that the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) was created.

The initiative has spread to other countries in the region since 1989, as democracy has gradually been regained. The variety of initiatives, both official and NGO-driven, has turned Latin America into one of the most experienced regions in the world in terms of the forensic exhumation and analysis of bone remains.

Luis Fondebrider is a forensic anthropologist and current president of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), a private scientific organization that since 1984 have been working in the scientific documentation of cases of political violence in Argentina and other 35 countries. His specialty is the investigation of cases, exhumation of graves and the analysis of skeletal remains (see www.eaaf.org).

Mr. Fondebrider is founding member of EAAF, and have worked investigating concrete cases in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Haiti,  Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Namibia, Congo, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Romania, The Philippines, Cyprus and Iraq.

Mr. Fondebrider had worked as consultant and forensic expert for the International Criminal Tribunal for the ex Yugoslavia, Truth Commissions of Argentina, Peru, El Salvador, Haiti and South Africa, UN Investigation Team for Congo, UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, Committee on Missing Persons of Cyprus, National Prosecutor Office of South Africa, Special Prosecutors Office of Ethiopia, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, ICRC, Presidential Commission on Search of Che Guevara's remains, Presidential Commission of Chile, among others.