The government of Cyprus signed Wednesday an agreement with the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics concerning the exhumation program of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) the objective of which is to recover, identify, and return to their families, the remains of the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot persons who went missing during the events in 1963 and the Turkish invasion against Cyprus in 1974.

According to the agreement, the Institute will conduct genetic tests for the needs of the program of exhumations in the government controlled areas outside the framework of the CMP and other needs arising from the obligations of the office of the Representative of the Greek Cypriot Community in the CMP for DNA identification purposes within the work of the CMP.
The agreement was signed by Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides and President of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Neurology and Genetics, Christos Eliades.
The Minister expressed the gratitude of the government towards the Institute for its long-lasting contribution in the efforts to ascertain the fate of the missing persons in Cyprus.

The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) is a bi-communal body established in 1981 by the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities with the participation of the United Nations. Following the establishment of an agreed list of missing persons, the CMP’s objective is to recover, identify, and return to their families, the remains of 2001 persons (502 Turkish Cypriots and 1,493 Greek Cypriots) who went missing during the inter-communal fighting of 1963 to 1964 and the events of 1974.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third. As a result of the invasion, 1,619 Greek Cypriots were listed as missing, most of whom soldiers or reservists, who were captured in the battlefield.  Among them, however, were many civilians, women and children, arrested by the Turkish invasion troops and Turkish Cypriot paramilitary groups, within the area controlled by the Turkish army after the end of hostilities and far from the battlefield. Many of those missing were last seen alive in the hands of the Turkish military. A further 41 more cases of Greek Cypriot missing persons have been recently added. These cases concern the period between 1963-1964, when inter-communal fighting broke out but none of them has been identified yet.

The number of Turkish Cypriot missing since 1974 and 1963/64 stands at 503.

According to the CMP to date, the remains of over 1,040 individuals have been exhumed and 479 have been identified and returned to their families.  Exhumations are carried out on both sides of the buffer zone by bi-communal teams (6 teams in the north and 2 teams in the south) made of over 55 Cypriot archaeologists and anthropologists. Bi-communal teams are now autonomous after having been trained by international experts from the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) during the first 18 months of the project.

The CMP has three Members, two appointed respectively by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities and a third Member selected by the International Committee of the Red Cross and appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General. Furthermore, the CMP employs a bi-communal forensic team of more than 60 Cypriot archeologists, anthropologists and geneticists, who conduct excavations throughout the island and anthropological and genetic analyses of remains at the CMP Anthropological Laboratory.

The CMP does not attempt to establish the cause of death or attribute responsibility for the death of missing persons. Its objective is a humanitarian one, bringing closure to thousands of affected families through the return of the remains of their missing relatives.