A U.N.-supported committee tasked with uncovering the fate of missing persons in Cyprus is adopting advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence and ground-penetrating radar, in a renewed push to locate and identify those who vanished during the island’s violent past.

As Reuters writes, the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) is leading a bi-communal team of archaeologists, anthropologists, and geneticists to investigate the cases of 2,002 individuals who went missing during the clashes of the 1960s and the 1974 Turkish invasion. Many victims were buried in unmarked graves across the island, and decades later, time and changing landscapes have made them harder to find.

“We plan to enhance our capacities to find answers through new technologies,” said Pierre Gentile, the U.N. representative on the CMP. The Committee will use artificial intelligence to analyze digitized archives for new leads and expand the use of ground-penetrating radar to locate potential burial sites.

Since fieldwork began in 2006, the CMP has located and exhumed the remains of 1,707 individuals. As of May 2025, 1,270 of them have been identified and returned to their families for proper burial.

The CMP relies largely on witness testimonies, often from elderly individuals promised confidentiality. However, progress has slowed in recent years due to inconsistent accounts, urban development, and natural changes in the landscape.

Despite the island’s decades-long division, the CMP remains one of the few initiatives where Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots work side by side.

“It is a very delicate humanitarian issue and the work we are doing is holy,” said Hakki Muftuzade, the Turkish Cypriot member of the CMP. “We are fully aware of the duty we have to fulfill.”

Established in 1981, the CMP remains a symbol of fragile but enduring cooperation, as the search for truth and closure continues for hundreds of Cypriot families.