The European Commission has signed a €2.6 million agreement with the United Nations Development Programme to support the work of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus. This is the 17th such agreement and is financed through the EU’s Aid Programme for the Turkish Cypriot community.
The new funding will contribute to CMP’s ongoing effort to recover, identify and return the remains of missing persons from the periods of intercommunal violence in 1963–64 and the events of 1974. CMP is mandated to clarify the fate of 2,002 individuals, including 492 Turkish Cypriots and 1,510 Greek Cypriots.
The European Commission continues to fund the bicommunal scientific teams involved in exhumations, anthropological analysis and identification procedures. According to the Commission, this support enables the uninterrupted operation of CMP’s technical work.
Since 2006, the European Commission has provided €43.7 million to CMP. The programme has facilitated the identification of 1,058 individuals to date.