Time has flown by since I started my ESC in Cyprus and I continue to discover  the country’s rich history with fascination. Every time, I am captured by the stories of the local people as they are always very open to talking about their past, and their culture and to see how Cyprus is a place where traditions still are a big deal to most of the people. From all the people I met (both locals and internationals), I was quite amazed by the amount of them occupied in conducting different humanitarian actions on the island. 

This is very understandable to me if we think about the fact that historically Cyprus is a country that experienced colonisation and decolonisation as well as a war that ended not a long time ago and from which testimonies are still diffused. Moreover, Cyprus is geographically situated in a very particular position, namely in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and so close to other European countries and the Middle East.  

Thanks to this, I learned about the existence of the Committee on Missing Persons of Cyprus. This humanitarian initiative has the only aim to find and return to the families the remains of the people who went missing between 1963 and 1974, to relieve them from their grief. It was instituted in 1981 by the two Cypriot communities with the help of the UN General Embassy and since then investigations and excavations have been taking place to find the 2002 disappeared people (as the official list counts). 

The CMP is working with various teams of archaeologists, anthropologists and scientists. Their work starts with an investigative phase in which the teams collect the necessary data for the identification of the right location for excavation thanks also to the testimonies they collected from witnesses and family members. Since 2006, when the excavations started, remains have been successfully found in different places such as open fields, water wells, mountain slopes and stream beds. 

After the exhumed remains are identified through the analysis of a team of anthropologists considering different factors such as sex, height, age at death, etc; the family members can finally view and pay their respects to the loved ones. Furthermore, in order to match the identity of the missing person with the genetic profiles of the relatives, a DNA test is conducted using bone samples and the match needs to reach a threshold of 99.95% to be approved. 

The CMP also provides a system of psychological support for the families involved in the process. 

The Committee keeps track of their work meticulously on their website (https://www.cmp-cyprus.org/). Until the 29th of February 1045 people were identified by the CMP: respectively 752 from the Greek Cypriot community and 293 from the Turkish Cypriot community.