DNA Forensic Family Reunification

The Human Rights Center has been at the forefront of DNA forensic research and its use in human rights settings since its inception. Our forensic work aims to improve the use of forensic DNA analysis both to hold perpetrators of violence accountable, and to reconnect families separated by conflict. Forensic analysis of DNA can be an important tool for establishing evidence of mass atrocities and potential war crimes. Identifying individuals can also establish a historical record and provide answers to survivors whose loved ones disappeared during conflict. Key to this legacy is HRC Faculty Director Eric Stover, who helped establish the legitimacy of DNA forensic testing as a human rights investigator.

When Stover joined the Human Rights Center in 1996, he was already working closely with human rights groups in El Salvador. He united forensic scientists and on-the-ground collaborators to collect DNA samples from family members of children abducted during the country’s civil war in the 1980s. Together with Salvadoran geneticist Patricia Vásquez and Chilean molecular biologist Dr. Cristián Orrego Benavente, who ran the HRC Forensic Project until his death in 2018, Stover helped to establish a family reference database with Asociación Pro Búsqueda de Niñas y Niños Desaparecidos (Association for Disappeared Children). Pro Búsqueda is  an NGO in San Salvador that reunites families with their children who were abducted or surrendered under duress during the war. As of 2019, the database contained nearly 1240 family reference samples. Through this continuing partnership with Pro Búsqueda, the Human Rights Center has helped reunite hundreds of families torn apart by the conflict, seeking to hold the Salvadoran government accountable for its military policy of abducting children from families during the conflict.