A/HRC/40/22 remaining mines in Cyprus within the buffer zone, and urged both sides to extend demining operations outside the buffer zone. 14. UNFICYP estimates that there remain 47 suspected hazardous areas in Cyprus, covering 1.7 million m2 of land, 42 per cent of which is in the buffer zone. Unfortunately, there was limited progress during the reporting period on the four known minefields in the buffer zone. While the Turkish Cypriot side has indicated that it would accept the clearance of all four areas as a package, the Greek Cypriot side maintains that its three minefields are required to counter a perceived threat (ibid., paras. 43–44). 15. As a result of the intercommunal fighting of 1963 and 1964 and the events of July 1974 and thereafter, 1,510 Greek Cypriots and 492 Turkish Cypriots have been officially reported as missing by both communities to the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus. During the reporting period, the Committee continued its bicommunal project on the exhumation, identification and return of the remains of missing persons. As at 30 November 2018, the Committee had exhumed the remains of 1,200 individuals on both sides of the island. From those, the remains of 914 missing individuals had been identified and returned to their respective families, including 60 during the reporting period. In accordance with the 2015–2018 agreement between the Committee and the Turkish authorities, access was granted to 30 military areas in the northern part of the island. As a result, the Committee had carried out excavations in 27 of those military areas as at 30 November (with 10 excavations in 2016, 12 in 2017 and 5 in 2018), leading to the recovery of the remains of 29 persons. A request by the Committee in August 2018 to change some of the locations delayed the completion of the 2018 agreed list of excavations. Discussions were under way regarding a new agreement for additional excavations in other military areas, covering the period 2019– 2021. 16. In order to obtain additional information, the archives research team of the Committee on Missing Persons undertook research visits to United Nations Headquarters in December 2017, to the National Archives of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in March 2018 and to the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in May 2018. 17. In its resolutions 2398 (2018) and 2430 (2018), the Security Council welcomed all efforts to accommodate the exhumation requirements of the Committee on Missing Persons. However, the Security Council called upon all parties to provide more expeditious, full access to all areas, given the need to accelerate the Committee’s work. The Secretary-General has underscored that it is critical for the Committee to continue receiving sufficient financial support and the information, including from relevant archives, required to accelerate its work, in the light of the advanced age of both witnesses and the relatives of persons who remain missing (ibid., para. 61). 18. On 7 June 2018, the Committee of Ministers’ Deputies of the Council of Europe reiterated that, due to the passage of time, it remained urgent for the Turkish authorities to sustain their proactive approach to providing the Committee on Missing Persons with all necessary assistance to continue to achieve tangible results as quickly as possible. The Ministers’ Deputies called upon the Turkish authorities to ensure that the Committee had unhindered access to all possible military zones located in the northern part of Cyprus and to provide the Committee proprio motu with any information from the relevant archives, including military archives, in their possession on burial sites and any other places where remains might be found. The Ministers’ Deputies noted the information provided by the Turkish authorities that the Committee would excavate in eight additional military areas in 2018, and that the archives committee established by the Turkish side would continue to examine the relevant archives for the information requested by the Committee on the location of remains. They also took note with interest that the Committee had identified a third missing person from the case of Varnava and Others v. Turkey, in connection with which the Missing 4