Why victimology should focus on all victims, including all missing and disappeared persons
| Author | Jeremy Sarkin |
| Published date | 01 May 2019 |
| Date | 01 May 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0269758018817843 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Why victimology should
focus on all victims,
including all missing
and disappeared persons
Jeremy Sarkin
NOVA University Lisboa, Portugal
Abstract
This article examines issues concerning the scope and role of victimology specifically as far as they
relate to missing and disappeared persons. It argues that victimology ought to have a greater effect
on the world by dealing with more victims, and that it should not be a solely academic discipline. It
is contended that victimology should confront the real issues that arise for the victims after the
crimes they suffer, and thus it needs to play a far more pragmatic, practical role. It is reasoned that
broadening the study of who victims are, how they become victims and how their fate and suffering
could have been avoided will also have a meaningful effect. This is also true regarding what can be
done to reduce the numbers of (potential) victims. The article specifically calls on victimology to
deal with victims who have gone missing. It argues that even amongst victimologists studying the
widest variety of affected victims, there is almost no focus on the missing. The article goes into
detail about who the missing are, and analyses the circumstances surrounding missing persons,
whether as a result of war, human rights abuses such as enforced disappearances, or disasters,
organized violence, migration and many more. The article also touches upon the processes of
finding missing persons and considers their legal, technical and societal implications.
Keywords
Victimology, missing persons, disappeared persons, transitional justice, victims, international law
Introduction
What victimology is, and what its contours are, is far from settled. Many see it as a sub-discipline
of criminology focused solely on victims of crime. Some argue for a wider definition incorporating
Corresponding author:
Jeremy Sarkin, Faculty of Law, NOVA University Lisboa, Campus de Campolide, 1099-032 Lisbon, Portugal.
Email: jeremy.sarkin@ymail.com
International Review of Victimology
2019, Vol. 25(2) 249–270
ªThe Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0269758018817843
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victims of state oppression. Others suggest that victimology does not cover victims of human
trafficking, disasters, and a range of other reasons why people become victims. And then there are
those who see it as an academic, theoretical discipline that has been hijacked to some degree by
practitioners who seek to move victimology away from its origins and from what they consider the
field should be about.
In this context, the subject of missing persons (all people who cannot be found), which is
different from, but includes, disappeared persons (those who have been taken by a state, or a
political faction, and their whereabouts not revealed), remains both theoretically under-studied and
practically limited. As a result, international and national processes to search, recover, identify and
return missing or disappeared persons are generally under-developed, with some domestic excep-
tions. Those cases have usually focused on cases of enforced disappearances, such as in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, where thousands of missing persons found in mass graves have been returned to their
families after their subsequent identification through DNA techniques (Sarkin et al., 2014). How-
ever, the majority of such victims have not benefitted from such search processes, principally due
to lack of political will or resources. Furthermore, academic ‘victimologist’ disciplines have hardly
focused any energy on the topic of missing persons. This is a major omission, as issues concerning
the missing and the disappeared are ongoing matters of major significance to both the families and
the wider society (Parr and Stevenson, 2013).
These are important issues as every year millions of people go missing as a result of conflict,
catastrophic events, human trafficking, organized violence and a myriad of other causes. These
include people who wander off because of an ailment, or children who run away. As a result of
these events, and depending on what occurs, many people cannot be found or identified. Their
families still await news about their loved ones’ fate and whereabouts. In many cases, this infor-
mation, for a variety of reasons, cannot or will not be revealed (Long, 2013). This clearly has
dramatic effects not only for these societies but also on individuals and families left behind.
This article thus argues that the dimension and scale of the missing and the disappeared is not
really understood internationally. This is partly because there has been little academic attention to
this issue. Where the literature does exist, it has ofte n focused on a specific country and the
subsequent context-specific issues. While there has been some attention on the disappeared, very
little consideration has been focused on the broader issues of the missing specifically. This is true
in all legal disciplines, including human rights law, criminology, victimology and transitional
justice. Specifically, in the discipline where the context of the missing has the most relevance and
applicability – humanitarian law – there has been very little focus on the legal and human rights
issues concerning missing victims. While there has been some attention to various component
aspects of the missing, such as disappearances, migrant issues, human trafficking or disasters, there
has been little specific focus on the issues concerning the missing as a whole.
The article therefore argues that there ought to be a greater focus on missing and disappeared
persons. It claims that, while the focus is often on dealing with why people go missing, little is done
to actually deal with this kind of victim. The article specifically calls on the field of victimology to
accept a wider focus and deal with victims who have gone missing. It argues that even amongst
victimologists who have a broader inclusiveness of who victims are, there is almost no focus on the
missing. With this in mind, this article delves into issues concerning missing persons. It describes
who they are and examines issues concerning the circumstances of persons going missing, whether
as a result of war, human rights abuses including disappearances, disasters, organized violence,
migration or other causes. It examines missing person processes across these various scenarios
with regard to their legal, technical and societal implications. The article also discusses the
250 International Review of Victimology 25(2)
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