The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) is a bicommunal 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 2,002 individuals (492 Turkish Cypriots and 1,510 Greek Cypriots) who went missing during the intercommunal fighting of 1963 to 1964 and the events of 1974.
Since 2005, EAAF has been a strategic partner to the CMP. That year, EAAF was hired to train local technical staff in forensic archaeology and anthropology and to develop procedures and protocols for the recovery, analysis and identification of human remains.
From 2006 to 2009, EAAF coordinated both this training and the recovery and analysis of remains. It later served as a supervisor and then as a permanent advisor to the CMP – a role it fulfills to this day.
Currently, the CMP has a bicommunal forensic team of more than 60 Cypriot archaeologists, anthropologists and geneticists who conduct excavations across the island and perform anthropological and genetic analysis of remains at the CMP’s Anthropological Laboratory.
In 2019, EAAF signed a memorandum of understanding with the CMP to establish the International Training Center. The current geopolitical stability in Cyprus is ideal for developing a project that serves countries in the region (Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Middle East), whose professionals were previously sent for forensic training to EAAF’s annual schools in South Africa.
