Brazil

In February 2018, the first identification was announced as part of a multidisciplinary effort to identify opponents of the regime who had been interred in a clandestine mass grave in Sao Paulo between 1971 and 1975. The identification of the body of Dimas Antonio Casemiro was confirmed following analysis of biological samples sent from Brazil to ICMP’s laboratory system.

Elsewhere in Brazil, families have battled for decades to force the authorities to investigate the disappearance of relatives during the armed insurgency against the military government that lasted from 1967 to 1974 in the Araguaia river basin in Central Brazil. In 2011, a federal task force took over work started by the families to locate the bodies of the missing rebels. The National Truth Commission, convened by President Dilma Rousseff, condemned the abuses of the military, and a federal amnesty commission began to provide compensation to some victims.

A final report published on 30 December 2022 by the Brazilian Government, in the final week of the Bolsonaro Administration, concluded the work of the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances (CEMDP). The CEMDP was established to examine disappearances during the dictatorship, and the conclusion of its activities was widely criticized since key elements of its work had not been completed. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed concern about the dissolution and called for the search for those missing from the Dictatorship to be “integrated into a comprehensive public policy on disappearance systematically and rigorously implemented by independent, impartial institutions with adequate human and technical resources, ensuring communication and coordinated action with victims’ families.”