A/HRC/31/21 2015, UNFICYP has liaised closely with the Turkish Cypriot authorities and secured their commitment to clear the area north of the ceasefire line in the following months (see S/2015/517, para. 12). Nonetheless, despite requests by UNFICYP, there was no progress with regard to access to the four known remaining minefields in the buffer zone, of which three are under the control of the National Guard and one is under the control of the Turkish forces (ibid., para. 14). UNFICYP has continued to work towards a “mine-free” Cyprus to remove all explosive hazards to persons on the island. 15. The question of missing persons arises from disappearances that occurred during the intercommunal fighting in 1963 and 1964, and from the events of July 1974 and afterwards, with a total of 1,508 Greek Cypriots and 493 Turkish Cypriots 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 31 October 2015, the remains of 1,020 individuals had been exhumed on both sides of the buffer zone by the Committee’s bicommunal teams of archaeologists. Of those, the remains of 614 missing individuals had been identified and returned to their respective families, including 50 in 2015.5 16. In resolution 2234 (2015), the Security Council welcomed all efforts to accommodate the exhumation requirements of the Committee on Missing Persons as well as the joint appeal for information issued by the two leaders on 28 May 2015, and called upon all parties to provide more expeditious, full access to all areas, given the need to intensify the Committee’s work. Between September and November 2015, a Committee excavation team exhumed two burial sites containing the remains of 36 persons in a military area in the north of Nicosia. On 5 November, the Secretary-General welcomed the confirmation by the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community that the Committee’s excavation teams would have access to 30 suspected burial sites in military areas in the north of Cyprus. Access would be given over a three-year period, starting in January 2016, with 10 sites to be excavated each year.6 17. On 6 January 2015, the European Court of Human Rights handed down a decision of inadmissibility in the case of Kayiplar and Others v. Cyprus. The case concerned Turkish Cypriots who had disappeared in 1974 and whose bodies had been exhumed by the Committee on Missing Persons, with funerals having taken place in 2013. The Court reiterated its conclusion from earlier cases, noting that as the investigation was still ongoing, it was too early to find that the authorities’ approach had infringed the minimum standard with regard to effective and adequate investigation into the death of the victims, despite some possible shortcomings in the area of communication by the government authorities with the victims’ relatives.7 18. On 11 June 2015, the Deputies of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers welcomed the progress made by the Committee on Missing Persons in the search for and the identification of missing persons, noting that 2014 was a landmark year regarding the number of persons identified. The Deputies recalled, due to the passage of time, the necessity for the Turkish authorities to adopt a proactive approach to providing the Committee on Missing Persons with all the assistance it needed to continue to achieve tangible results as quickly as possible. Noting with interest the new information provided 5 6 7 That figure does not include 98 individuals who were identified by the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus but are not on the official list of missing persons. See also S/2015/17, para. 21. Information received from the Secretariat of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus. European Court of Human Rights, Kayiplar and Others v. Cyprus, decision of 6 January 2015, application No. 42153/14, paras. 13-14. 5