In 1975, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA in Portuguese) declared independence from Portugal and took power. Since then, Angola has experienced conflicts, particularly with two other anti-colonial groups: the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA). A peace agreement was reached in 2002, after an estimated 1.5 million people had died and some 4 million had been displaced.
During the conflict between government forces and UNITA, the city of Kuito was the scene of fighting from 1998 to 2000. There were hundreds of casualties on both sides, and according to reports from that time, people were buried in various locations – streets, courtyards and abandoned spaces – because it was dangerous to conduct burials in cemeteries.
In the years that followed, many of those bodies were relocated. At the request of the provincial commission for the exhumation of bodies buried in Kuito (the capital of Bie province), and with funding from the Open Society Institute, EAAF participated in 2003 in a preliminary mission to Angola with logistical support from the Christian Children’s Fund (CCF) to analyze the bodies that had not yet been identified and to train local professionals for that work.
