The ‘nobodies’: Unclaimed corpses denies respect to the deceased

The high number of unclaimed dead bodies across the world, accompanied by minimal data, has been referred to as a “silent disaster”.

This is according to the “The nobodies: unidentified dead bodies, a global health crisis requiring urgent attention” report published by The Lancet Global Health.

According to the report, the scarcity of records and data for unidentified dead people has dire consequences as it perpetuates a belief that those who are not counted do not count.

“The circumstances surrounding their deaths are often unknown, and their bodies go unclaimed. Identification represents one of the most basic of all human rights and yet with continuing humanitarian disasters, infectious disease outbreaks, mass migrations on precarious and often deadly land and sea routes, as well as human trafficking, the number of unidentified dead bodies grows.”

Earlier this year the Gauteng department of health urged those with missing family members to come forward as more than 900 unidentified bodies lay in the province’s mortuaries.

Should a body remain unidentified or unclaimed for more than seven days, the fingerprints are sent to the police’s criminal record centre or the department of home affairs for identification. When that process is successful, the next-of-kin is contacted through the police investigating officer for the final release and burial or cremation, said the department.

“The presence of unidentified bodies raises pressing ethical and practical concerns that demand immediate attention to successfully attain global health objectives, including serving the vulnerable, reducing health inequalities and responding to humanitarian crises,” read the report.

Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto on Tuesday released a list containing the names of 25 people, some of whom were unidentified, whose bodies were yet to be collected from the hospital's morgue. 

While some of the people had been positively identified and had addresses linked to them, the mortuary said not all of these were correct.

“It is very important to provide the correct details when you are being registered,” the facility said.

From an ethical standpoint, these individuals are often denied the respect they deserve as they are buried without proper identification, often in mass graves and without accompanying religious or cultural ceremonies, said the report.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Johannesburg Forensic Pathology Service highlight migrants as constituting a substantial proportion of unidentified bodies. When they were alive they feared legal repercussions, experienced heightened vulnerability and often succumbed to illness or violence.

The International Organisation for Migration's Missing Migrants Project, the initiative documenting migrant deaths on a global scale revealed, there were more than 50,000 migrant deaths since 2014, with about 60% remaining unidentified.

“The treatment of unidentified dead bodies is a personal tragedy for the families of the deceased who face the anguish of ambiguous loss. This psychological state marked by uncertainty about the fate of the missing has severe negative effects on an individual's wellbeing and health that make identification of the dead a crucial global public health priority.

“Identification holds crucial legal implications, including obtaining death certificates necessary for claiming inheritance or transferring parental responsibilities. Lack of identification also hampers criminal investigations as justice cannot be served if the victim is not named,” said the report.

Despite its importance, there is a lack of organised effort to identify the numbers of unidentified dead bodies globally and establish who they were in life.

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