Every missing Cypriot counts 

The tragedy of missing persons in Cyprus is one of the island’s deepest and most enduring wounds. It is also one of the few areas where meaningful bicommunal cooperation has remarkably endured for decades amid division. That cooperation – embodied in the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) in Cyprus – rests on a simple yet powerful principle: every missing Cypriot counts. 

Yet public discourse has not always lived up to that principle. 

Too often, the story of the missing is told as if it began in 1974. The official framework –agreed by both communities and supported by the United Nations – recognises that the Missing include victims of intercommunal violence beyond 1963-64, as well as those from 1974. The agreed list comprises 2,002 missing persons: 1,510 Greek Cypriots and 492 Turkish Cypriots. They are part of a single, shared humanitarian tragedy. 

A 1964 report of the UN secretary-general documented that Turkish Cypriots travelling between towns and villages were subjected to checks, searches, and – crucially – had little confidence in their safety. Following the disappearance of some hostages in May 1964, road movement largely ceased, and travel required a UN escort. In some areas, economic restrictions amounted to siege conditions.  

This early phase matters to understand why many pre-1974 Turkish Cypriot missing cases remain especially difficult to resolve today. The passage of time has compounded the problem. The CMP began its operational work only decades later. Witnesses have died. Landscapes have changed. In some cases, individuals were killed in one place and buried in another, with no surviving testimony to guide investigators. These are among the “hard cases” that remain. 

There is no question that most Greek Cypriot missing persons disappeared in 1974, and that their families have endured decades of uncertainty and grief. Their suffering must never be diminished. Historical integrity also requires acknowledging that violence during that period was not solely intercommunal. The July 1974 coup triggered intra-Greek Cypriot violence, including disappearances of political opponents.  

I have a personal connection to this history that I cannot set aside. In the summer of 1974, during my break from medical studies in England, I returned to Nicosia and volunteered as a medical assistant at the makeshift general hospital (a converted cigarette factory) in the city’s Turkish quarter. Under the guidance of Kaya Bekiroglu, a distinguished surgeon trained at the renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, New York, I assisted in care for the wounded, moving patients in and out of the operating room. 

Among those we treated was a young Greek Cypriot man, purported to be a member of Archbishop Makarios’ national guard, who had been left for dead during the violence of the coup. He was not a casualty of intercommunal fighting, but of conflict within his own community. He had been rescued and brought to the hospital under UN supervision. I remember offering him water as he recovered; he asked for a Coca-Cola instead, then remarked, with a faint smile, that it was not cold. We had no ice. 

He survived. Once stable, he was safely returned to UN custody. That brief encounter has stayed with me – not because it was extraordinary, but because it was not. It reflected a reality often lost in simplified narratives: that during those days of July 1974, before the Turkish army reached Nicosia, violence was already unfolding within and between communities. The suffering was shared, layered and tragically intertwined. 

As quoted by Defence Minister Vasilis Palmas, the issue of missing persons is “a humanitarian and moral matter, touching upon human dignity and the right of every family to know the truth” (Cyprus Mail, April 21, ‘Missing persons ‘a matter of the present’).  Indeed, the CMP does not determine the cause of death or assign blame. Its mandate is humanitarian: to locate, exhume, identify and return remains to families. In doing so, it has achieved something extraordinary. As of early 2026, more than a thousand individuals on the official list have been identified and returned to their loved ones. Each identification is an act of restoration and dignity. 

The CMP’s work also offers a model for the future. Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot scientists work side by side. Families from both communities receive answers. DNA, not politics, determines identity. In a landscape where so much remains divided, this quiet cooperation is one of the few shared successes. 

But that success depends on a commitment that must be renewed. Selective memory injected into the present – intentional or not – risks undermining that commitment. The way forward is not to compete over victimhood. It is to insist on a shared ethic: that every life lost, every person unaccounted for, deserves the same effort, the same respect, and the same acknowledgment.  

Every missing Cypriot counts.  

“Truth is truth to the end of reckoning.” (William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 5, Scene 1). 

Kerim M. Munir is a professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, and a graduate of the bicommunal English School in Nicosia, Cyprus. This piece is offered as a personal reflection and a civic appeal to bring the two communities together