The closing kinship window: a continuous identification framework centred on kinship for historical and postconflict...

Historical and post-conflict mass grave programmes increasingly recover genetic profiles from skeletal remains, yet final identification may remain limited when family reference collection, post-mortem analysis, matching and re-analysis are organised as separate projects. This evidence-informed framework development study presents the Kinship-Centred Continuous Identification Framework for settings in which the possible victim set is open or uncertain. Framework development is defined as the integration of established evidence and operational standards into a time-ordered system with explicit decision points, feedback pathways and governance requirements; individual components are not claimed as novel. A purposive evidence map covering database inception to 9 May 2026 identified recurrent operational bottlenecks across legal medicine, forensic genetics, humanitarian forensic action, archaeology, anthropology, disaster victim identification and transitional justice. The synthesis produced seven design principles and ten implementation components. The framework begins before excavation with mandate clarification, a provisional candidate-victim list, genealogical triage and prioritised family reference collection. It incorporates commingling-aware sampling, profile-informativity classification, question-led marker selection, direct and programme-wide matching, trained human interpretation and multidisciplinary reconciliation. Paterna Cemetery (Valencia, Spain), containing mass graves associated with executions during the Francoist repression, served as the case-generating example; published programme-level evidence illustrates why grave assignment, candidate lists and genealogies must remain revisable. The framework also requires periodic re-examination of direct-reference options and unresolved profiles. Its central premise is that skeletal degradation and progressive loss of highly informative relatives are coupled constraints. Legal medicine services should therefore move from episodic exhumation support toward accountable, consent-based and continuously updated identification infrastructure.