Nicosia, Cyprus. Austria has made its first financial contribution to the Committee on Missing Persons, donating €20,000 to support efforts to identify and return the remains of missing individuals in Cyprus. The funds were received on June 12 and will contribute to the committee’s work in 2026.
Support for identification efforts
The contribution will support the committee’s ongoing work to help bring closure to families who have lived with uncertainty for decades.
According to the Committee on Missing Persons, 1,069 missing persons from both communities have so far been identified and their remains returned to their families.
Committee mandate
The Committee on Missing Persons is a bicommunal body established in 1981 by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities with the participation of the United Nations.
Its mandate is to recover, identify and return to their families the remains of 2,002 people who went missing during the periods 1963-64 and 1974, as well as the intervening years. Of these, 1,510 are Greek Cypriots and 492 are Turkish Cypriots.
Operations and staffing
The committee’s exhumation and identification project became operational in 2006, with the European Union remaining its main financial contributor.
The Committee on Missing Persons comprises three members appointed by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities and the United Nations. It employs a bicommunal forensic team of more than 60 Cypriot archaeologists, anthropologists and geneticists who conduct excavations and laboratory analyses across the island.
Humanitarian role
The committee does not seek to establish the cause of death or assign responsibility for the disappearance of missing persons. It describes its role as a humanitarian one aimed at providing closure to affected families.
