Foto: Alain Wittmann

The Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF) is a non-profit civil society organization based in Lima, Peru, that since 1997 applies Forensic Anthropology to the search for persons forcibly disappeared during the period of internal political conflict (from 1980 to 2000).

In Peru, recent estimates of missing and disappeared persons resulting from the period of internal violence from 1980-2000 make and estimate of over 15,000 cases. In a report published in 2006, the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (National Coordinator of Human Rights) reported the presence of approximately 3,846 total burial sites in the province of Ayacucho alone. Twenty-five years after the first disappearance we are left with two certainties: the banishment of thousands of individuals and the existence of thousands of mass graves. Despite what may appear to be a straightforward relationship between the two, the connection is not a linear one. In an effort to elucidate a connection between the two, EPAF works to establish the identities of those exhumed from the graves. By the correct identification of an individual exhumed from any one of the grave sites, EPAF can begin to establish a solid connection between the thousands of ‘disappearances’ and the thousands of graves; namely that the graves are a direct result of the murder of thousands of innocent, ‘disappeared’ Peruvians.

EPAF is a member of Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (National Coordinator of Human Rights) and also provides forensic expertise to other organizations such as the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (APRODEH), the Comisión Episcopal de Acción Social (CEAS), the Asociación Nacional de Familiares de Secuestrados, Detenidos y Desaparecidos del Peru (ANFASEP), and Office of the Public Prosecutor.