Healing through the Bones: Empowerment and the Process of Exhumations in the Context of Cyprus

Violent conflict created a divide in Cyprus (1950–1974) that still exists to this day between Turkish and Greek Cypriots. This study explores specifically an effect of violent conflict—Missing Persons and the bi-communal process of their humanitarian return. This process is important for peacebuilding because it empowers individuals, families, communities, and nation-states to satisfy basic human psycho-social needs in order to deal with the trauma of past violence, to recognize loss and grieve, and to seek closure of uncertainty to prevent the transgenerational transmission of trauma and escalation of violence between and within ethnic societies.