A/HRC/25/21 III. Specific human rights concerns 12. The persisting division of Cyprus continues to have consequences for a number of human rights issues on the whole island, including (a) the right to life and the question of missing persons; (b) the principle of non-discrimination; (c) freedom of movement; (d) property rights; (e) freedom of religion and cultural rights; (f) freedom of opinion and expression; and (g) the right to education. In addition, it is important that a gender perspective be adopted when negotiating and implementing peace agreements (see paragraphs 52 – 57 below). A. Right to life and the question of missing persons 13. According to article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. Furthermore, article 1 of the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance provides that any act of enforced disappearance is an offence to human dignity, placing the persons subjected thereto outside the protection of the law and inflicting severe suffering on them and their families; any act of enforced disappearance also violates or constitutes a grave threat to the right to life. 14. As a result of the inter-communal fighting in 1963 and 1964, and of the events of July 1974 and afterwards, a total of 1,493 Greek Cypriots and 502 Turkish Cypriots have been officially reported as missing by both communities to the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus. During the period under review, the Committee continued its bicommunal project on the exhumation, identification and return of the remains of missing persons. As at 22 November 2013, the remains of 1,000 individuals had been exhumed on both sides of the buffer zone by the Committee’s bicommunal teams of archaeologists; the remains of 818 missing persons had been analysed in the initial phase at the Committee’s bicommunal anthropological laboratory; and the remains of 456 missing individuals (359 Greek Cypriots and 97 Turkish Cypriots) had been identified and returned to their respective families, including 124 since 1 December 2012. In comparison with previous years, this represents a sharp rise in the return of remains, which is largely attributable to the doubling of the Committee’s anthropological laboratory, the successful transition to the genetic laboratory of the International Commission of Missing Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the extraction of DNA from bone samples, and in-house final identifications made by the Committee’s own recently created genetic unit. 15. From 19 to 21 December 2012, a delegation of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament visited Cyprus to gather information concerning developments in the work of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus. In its mission report, the delegation called for immediate and unrestricted access of the Committee to all military areas in the northern part of Cyprus, underlining that the right to know the fate of missing relatives is a fundamental right of the families concerned and must be guaranteed. Furthermore, the delegation reaffirmed that the humanitarian issue of the missing persons in Cyprus is a stand-alone issue and must not be linked to or influenced by any other political considerations.16 16. The Security Council, in its resolution 2114 (2013), welcomed all efforts to accommodate the exhumation requirements of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, and called upon all parties to provide full access to Committee teams. With regard 16 6 See www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/libe/dv/929/929467/929467en.pdf.