Identifying Argentina's Unknown Soldiers

Almost 40 years after the Falkland Islands/Malvinas conflict, we look back on the ICRC’s efforts to identify unknown soldiers. Figuring who these unknown soldiers were took decades to resolve. But in 2012, the ICRC received a request from the Argentine government to help identify their remains. Then in 2016 with the ICRC as a neutral intermediary, Argentina and the UK negotiated and signed an agreement known as the Humanitarian Project Plan. The crucial work of exhuming the graves and identifying remains fell to Luis Bernardo Fondebrider, co-founder of the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team. He worked with a multidisciplinary team of scientists from around the world, who began the exhumations at the Argentine Cemetery at Darwin--on the central eastern side of the islands.

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