Cyprus has the “second-best results in the world” regarding the search for missing persons, according to the outgoing third member of the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) Paul-Henri Arni.

Speaking on Thursday to commemorate the end of his ten-and-a-half-year term as the CMP’s third member, Arni said the remains of 1,033 people have been identified and returned, 571 of them during his tenure. This constitutes a “success rate” of 51.5 per cent.

He added that he had “sent a message to Ankara” via the United Nations Assistant Secretary General Miroslav Jenca, upon the latter’s visit to Cyprus, regarding “the need to access Turkish military archives for information on the issue”.

There are 42 countries in the world in which there are missing persons from conflict or political violence, and Henri said in most of those, the success rate for finding their remains is below 20 per cent.

“Some are at zero per cent, some at one per cent. Georgia is at 16 per cent. Argentina, a very cold case, is at 20 per cent”, he said.

The highest rate of missing persons found is in the former Yugoslavia, with 75 per cent of missing persons now having been located.