New publication: “How society cares for the dead - a matter of human dignity!”

The possibility to say farewell and to grieve, and the knowledge that the dead are cared for and buried in an appropriate manner, is frequently a precondition for many people being able to return to their everyday lives. People do not find peace as long as their dead do not find their rest. Experiences of existential loss require the dead to be taken care of by rituals, as well as by individual forms of burial and saying farewell. Death thus becomes comprehensible as a caesura, and thus more bearable. Respectful conservation of the integrity of the dead serves at the same time as a reverential orientation towards the dignity of life per se. Caring for the dead in a dignified manner reflects a desire to treat the living relatives appropriately, given that they have become vulnerable by virtue of having lost a person who was close to them, who was loved, offered protection or was at least present.

However, in many cases - for example in the context of war, surpressive autocratic rule or displacement - the fundamental human need to care for the dead appropriately is impeded or even deliberately prevented. In these contexts, the dead often become the target of deliberate acts of violence: the places and circumstances of death are concealed from the relatives, access to the graves is denied, graves are desecrated and the dead defamed for propaganda purposes, appropriate burials are hindered. Such actions are aimed at the relatives or the groups from which the dead originate. It is an instrument of repression that seriously violates the human dignity of those affected and divides entire societies even after the original act of violence has ended and for generations to come.

The German Commission for Justice and Peace has convened a working group with experts from various fields and disciplines to analyse the effects of the lack of appropriate care for the dead from a human rights perspective and to develop recommendations for action to counteract such violations. To this end, the working group, in dialogue with international partners, studied various contexts in which the appropriate care for the dead is impaired: the treatment of refugees who died in the Mediterranean using the example of Lampedusa, enforced disappearances using the examples of Mexico and Colombia and various wars, including Russia's current war of aggression against Ukraine.

The results of the studies and exchanges were summarised in the publication "How society cares for the dead - a matter of human dignity!", which is available in English, Spanish and German.