“The Nobodies”: unidentified dead bodies—a global health crisis requiring urgent attention

Every year, millions of dead people across the globe remain unidentified and are never returned to their families or communities. The circumstances surrounding their death are often unknown, and their bodies go unclaimed. Identification represents one of the most basic of all human rights3 and yet with continuing humanitarian disasters, infectious disease outbreaks, mass migrations on precarious and often deadly land and sea routes, as well as human trafficking, the numbers of unidentified dead bodies grow.