The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) received a financial contribution of €40,000 from the Hellenic Republic on 30 December 2024, CMP announced Monday.

“This donation brings Greece’s financial assistance to the CMP to a total of €425,000 since 2006”, the CMP said.

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

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied 37% of its territory. Since then, the fate of hundreds of people remains unknown.

A Committee on Missing Persons has been established, upon agreement between the leaders of the two communities, with the scope of exhuming, identifying and returning to their relatives the remains of 492 Turkish Cypriots and 1,510 Greek Cypriots, who went missing during the inter-communal fighting of 1963-1964 and in 1974. 

The CMP Project on the Exhumation, Identification and Return of Remains of Missing Persons in Cyprus became operational in 2006 and is co-funded by the European Union.

So far, 1,051 missing persons from both Cypriot communities have been identified and returned to their families for dignified burials.