The Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) on Wednesday announced that it had received a donation amounting to £15,000 (€17,282) from the United Kingdom.

The donation brings the total amount donated by the UK to €322,282 since 2004, with the CMP saying that the funding has “enabled the CMP to undertake essential DNA analyses and acquire necessary equipment required for its operations in 2026”.

“The continued support of the United Kingdom constitutes a valuable contribution to the CMP’s efforts to identify and return the remains of missing persons, thereby helping to bring closure to families who have endured longstanding uncertainty,” it said.

After becoming active in 2006, the CMP set out to locate and identify a total of 2,002 people who went missing during Cyprus’ intercommunal conflicts, and has thus far exhumed 1,714 bodies and identified the remains of 1,065 people from the official list, as well as 216 others.

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Of those identified, 301 were Turkish Cypriots and 764 were Greek Cypriots.

Last year, the remains of 23 people were found, with 12 of them having been identified. Eight of those were Greek Cypriots and the other four were Turkish Cypriots.

In addition to donations from the UK, the CMP also takes donations from other international organisations and from nation states, with the European Union having donated €2.6 million in January.