UN warns time is running out to identify 315 still missing from Iraq-Kuwait conflict

The UN Security Council has renewed calls to identify 315 people still missing from the 1990–91 Iraq-Kuwait conflict, as officials warned that dwindling witness testimony and unresolved questions over missing Kuwaiti property are making the work more urgent.

Mari Yamashita, the UN Secretary-General’s senior representative on the Iraq-Kuwait missing-persons file, told the Council that the fate of 290 people from an original group of 605 missing Kuwaitis and third-country nationals had been clarified. Of the 315 still missing, 308 are Kuwaiti, she said. The last confirmed identification was in August 2023.

Yamashita said 14,000 trenches had been excavated at the Khamisiyah site, where investigators are focusing on an area believed to contain the remains of between 150 and 180 missing Kuwaitis. If that estimate is confirmed, she said, the site could account for at least half of the remaining cases. She warned that new witnesses were becoming harder to find: “We are running out of time.”

She also cited a key witness whose accounts differed from his earlier testimony and who was no longer willing to co-operate. Yamashita said she regretted that the Iraqi government had been unable to secure his participation.

The Council heard competing accounts of progress. Kuwait’s representative, Rabea Saad al-Adsani, said the challenge included failures to follow up information and testimony already received, and called on Iraq to set out a mechanism and timetable for tracing missing Kuwaiti property and archives. Iraq’s representative said 294 of around 602 missing Kuwaiti nationals had been identified and repatriated, and that work with Kuwait and the International Committee of the Red Cross was continuing. The figures differ from Yamashita’s count of 605 missing Kuwaiti and third-country nationals.

Iraq’s representative acknowledged that no new identifications had been recorded, but said that did not mean efforts had stopped. He also cited the return of about 200,000 books to Kuwait’s National Library in 2019 and 738 boxes of material belonging to Kuwait’s Ministry of Information in 2022. Al-Adsani said progress on missing property, including national archives, remained a concern.

The Council’s discussion also highlighted the pressure of time on evidence. Liberia’s representative, speaking for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, said families had received neither answers nor relief and urged efforts to preserve testimony, records and institutional knowledge. The United States called for known witnesses to be located and interviewed, while the United Kingdom pointed to the potential of DNA analysis and geospatial tools, cautioning that technology alone could not provide all the answers.

Yamashita said some Kuwaiti property had been returned, including material transferred to the National Library in 2019, but that meaningful progress had been limited. She called for a clear plan to identify and locate the missing property and archives. The files remain part of the unresolved humanitarian legacy of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.