EU donates €2.6m to Committee on Missing Persons

The Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) on Thursday announced that it had received a donation of €2.6 million from the European Union.

“The funds will support the committee’s goal of identifying and returning the remains of missing individuals in 2026, bringing to an end the uncertainty which has affected the families for so many years,” it said.

Thursday’s donation brings the total amount donated to the CMP by the EU to €43.7m since 2007, with the EU the largest financial contributor to it.

After becoming active in 2006, the CMP set out to locate and identify a total of 2,002 people who went missing during Cyprus’ intercommunal conflicts, and has thus far exhumed 1,707 bodies and identified the remains of 1,058 people from the official list, as well as 216 others.

Of those identified, 296 were Turkish Cypriots and 762 were Greek Cypriots.

Last year, the remains of 22 people were found, with seven of them having been identified. Six of those were Greek Cypriots and the other was a Turkish Cypriot.

Former CMP third member Paul-Henri Arni said last year that Cyprus has the “second-best results in the world” in its search for missing persons.

There are 42 countries in the world in which there are missing persons from conflict or political violence, and Henri said in most of those, the success rate for finding their remains is below 20 per cent.

“Some are at zero per cent, some at one per cent. Georgia is at 16 per cent. Argentina, a very cold case, is at 20 per cent,” he said.

In addition to donations from the EU, the CMP also takes donations from other international organisations and from nation states, with Greece having donated €50,000 in October last year and Turkey having donated US$100,000 the following month. Both countries are regular donors, though donations also come from further afield.

Portugal, for example, donated €15,000 in September last year, with the country’s ambassador in Nicosia Vanda Sequeira saying at the time that Portugal “considers the CMP to be an invaluable institution, bringing closure to thousands of families from both Cypriot communities who lost loved ones due to the tragic events of 1963 to 1964, and 1974”.

She added that the CMP “stands as a unique bicommunal mechanism, demonstrating that humanitarian objectives can prevail even in the most complex political circumstances”.

“The spirit of cooperation is essential in Cyprus, where building trust remains a cornerstone of reconciliation,” she said.