Summary

In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions focuses on forensic medicine and examines the challenges facing medico-legal death investigation systems and contemporary forensic professionals, in particular forensic doctors and ancillary specialists, in the investigation of potentially unlawful deaths. The Special Rapporteur draws on the experience of forensic doctors and professionals from all regions of the world who shared their views to help him to achieve a global understanding of the current status of national medico-legal death investigation systems. He also offers examples of best practices in the area of medico-legal death investigations and formulates recommendations to enhance such systems, including through compliance with the standards that the mandate helped to develop, promote and implement over its 40 years of existence (the Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions, of 1989, and the Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death, 2016), with the aim of strengthening the protection of the right to life.