Oh what joy – an outing to a laboratory filled with bones and teeth! Yes. the podcast team took a look at the new facility that the International Commission on Missing Persons has built in The Hague.

ICMP gets involved in all kinds of situations, whether conflict or disaster, and they specialise in the most difficult to identify bones. At the new labs we discussed new techniques, how they are now able to identify remains from DNA samples back through previous generations, and how they are building their ‘reference’ library which meaning storing data against which bones can be matched.

This is a quick dive into the subject. We’d love to do more to understand the complexities of this world and discuss further the challenges posed by bodies affected by chemical weapons in Syria or those fresh from Ukraine bombings or those from conflicts many decades old such as Vietnam. But this is just a peek into the white tiled pristine laboratory. Thanks to Lucy Johnson for showing us round.

For a wider picture on mass graves, check out a previous podcast with did with Kathryne Bomberger the ICMP head and Agnes Callamard especially on the protocols needed to help with investigation.