Book of the Disappeared

The Quest for Transnational Justice

Subjects: Political Science, Human Rights, Political History, International Relations
Paperback : 9780472055937, 368 pages, 11 artworks, 6 x 9, May 2023
Hardcover : 9780472075935, 368 pages, 11 artworks, 6 x 9, May 2023
Open Access : 9780472903252, 368 pages, 11 artworks, 6 x 9, May 2023

The open access version of this book is made available thanks in part to the support of libraries participating in Knowledge Unlatched
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A unique and timely publication, for advocates, academics, and practitioners, providing invaluable insight into the plight of the disappeared

Table of contents

Acknowledgements
Artwork
Introduction
        JENNIFER HEATH and ASHRAF ZAHEDI
Interlude: Index of the Disappeared
    CHITRA GANESH and MARIAM GHANI
1 ─ Latin America's Contributions to the Development of Institutional Responses to Enforced Disappearances
    ARIEL E. DULITZKY
2 ─ The Impact of Enforced Disappearance on Women
        AMRITA KAPUR
    Interlude: Between Two Rivers
        SAMA ALSHAIBI
3 ─ Iraq: Enforced Disappearance as a Tool of War
        DIRK ADRIAENSENS
4 ─ Extraordinary Rendition: A Human Rights Analysis
        DAVID WEISSBRODT
    Interlude: Abu Ghraib
        NANCY MARON 
5 ─ Lives in Limbo: Afghanistan’s Epidemic of Disappearances
        DALAS MAZOORI and STEFAN SCHMITT
6 ─ Vanishing Nation: Enforced Disappearances in Syria 
        SARETA ASHRAPH and NICOLETTE WALDMAN
    Interlude: Do Not Forget Us: La Tanssana
        HELEN ZUGHAIB
7 ─ Politics of Silence and Denial: 1988 Enforced Disappearances and Executions in Iran
        ASHRAF ZAHEDI
    Interlude: The Eyes
        YASSI GOLSHANI
8 ─ The Legacy of Wartime Rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina
EDINA BEĆIREVIĆ and MAJDA HALIOVIĆ
9 ─ Genocide of the Rohingya
        AKILA RADHAKEISHNAN and ELENA SARVER
    Interlude: The Elephant and the Pond of Blood
        LEANG SECKON
10 ─ The Khmer Rouge Bureaucrats: Counting the Missing
        JAMES A. TYNER
    Interlude: Lynch Fragments
        MELVIN EDWARDS
11 ─ Our Resilient Bodies: The Role of Forensic Science and Medicine in Restoring the Disappeared to History
        SOREN BLAU
    Interlude: In Between/Underneath (Entremedio/Por Debajo)
        JONATHAN HERRERA SOTO
12 ─ Retributive or Restorative Justice: Gacaca Courts’ Contribution to Transitional Justice and Reconciliation in poet-Genocide Rwanda
        HILMI ZAWATI
13 ─ MIA: Disappearing Political Analysis in Transnational Justice
        VASUKI NESIAH
    Interlude: Stolen
        MORGAN C. PAGE
14 ─ Story as Portal: Healing, Regeneration, and Possibility After Genocide
        KAYHAN IRANI
15 ─ The Psychology of Bystanders, Perpetrators, and Heroic Helpers
        ERVIN STAUB
About the Contributors
Index

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Description

Book of the Disappeared confronts worldwide human rights violations of enforced disappearance and genocide and explores the global quest for justice with forceful, outstanding contributions by respected scholars, expert practitioners, and provocative contemporary artists. This profoundly humane book spotlights our historic inhumanity while offering insights for survival and transformation.

Jennifer Heath is an Independent scholar, Author/Editor, Activist, and Curator.

Ashraf Zahedi, a sociologist, is a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Book of the Disappeared is destined to be an essential work in the field of human rights for years to come. The authors argue that the search for the disappeared must be conducted for three reasons: to locate, identify, and return the remains of the disappeared to family members for proper burial; to gather evidence to hold perpetrators accountable; and to set the historical record straight.”
—Eric Stover, Co-Faculty Director, Human Rights Center, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley

- Eric Stover

Book of the Disappeared provides new ways of conceiving enforced disappearances free from the weight of old referents. It helps us understand this as a global problem, allowing us to enter into wide geographical horizons, which until now have been largely invisible.”
—Gabriel Gatti, Professor of Sociology, University of the Basque Country, Spain

- Gabriel Gatti

“This is a welcome contribution to the field of transitional justice as it presents a plethora of historical and ongoing case studies of importance for specialist and nonspecialist audiences to understand the grave consequences of political violence to individuals and societies.”
—Sonja Biserko, President of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia

- Sonja Biserko

“This book is an essential read because it reviews the issues connected to enforced disappearances and documents their widespread global nature. This is a tour de force, written by some of the most well-known researchers, with deep knowledge about these matters. The book usefully evaluates the crimes committed and the quest for justice.”
—Jeremy Julian Sarkin, Distinguished Research Professor of Law, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal and Former Chair-Rapporteur of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances

- Jeremy Julian Sarkin

“By documenting the impact of victims who have turned activists and formed effective grassroots movements with global impact, Book of the Disappeared provides a roadmap for the reader who wants to become familiar with global movements for justice that had their roots in communities where these atrocities occurred. Any person interested in human rights, international justice, the voice of the silenced, will be interested to read this book.”
—Avideh Shashaani, President, Fund for the Future of our Children

- Avideh Shashaani

Heath and Zahedi’s titular diction (“quest” and “justice”) guides the reader towards this impressionable futurity: a quest is both a journey and a seeking, a quest(ion) that requires crossing into unknown and (sometimes unknowable) spaces. What Book of the Disappeared ultimately seeks is this question of justice: how do we make legible and judgeable the extrajudicial and “arbitrary deprivation of right to life” that is enforced disappearance? 

- Haley Eazor, E3W Review of Books

Read: Review in E3W: Ethnic and Third World Literatures | April 2024