315 people are missing

For families in Kuwait who lost a father, a brother or a son during the 1990 invasion, every year that passes without an answer is another year of not knowing. On Monday, the United Nations told the Security Council that 315 people from that time are still missing, more than three and a half decades later.

Most of them, 308 people, are Kuwaiti nationals. The rest are third-country nationals who disappeared during the same period. Senior UN Representative Mari Yamashita gave the update, calling the situation a humanitarian file that “remains unresolved” after more than 35 years.

How the numbers have changed over 30 years

Back when the search began, 605 people from Kuwait and other countries were listed as missing. Over three decades, the fate of 290 of them has been clarified. That leaves 315 cases still open. Yamashita told the Council that the last confirmed identification happened in August 2023, which shows how slow and difficult this work has become.

Iraqi authorities have carried out large excavation efforts to try to find answers. At the Khamisiyah site alone, they have dug through about 14,000 trenches. Teams have also carried out many field missions to other locations believed to hold remains.

Why Khamisiyah matters so much

Khamisiyah is seen as the most important site in this search. Investigators believe it could hold the remains of 150 to 180 missing Kuwaiti nationals. That is close to half of all the unresolved cases still on the list.

In September, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the independent body that works on humanitarian issues including missing persons, joined Iraqi authorities for a field mission to the site. Yamashita said she hopes the findings from that visit will lead to more excavation work there soon.

This search connects to a wider pattern of difficult, decades-old cases from the Gulf region slowly reaching some kind of resolution. Kuwait’s courts have also been dealing with other legacy cases from this period, including the case of a Syrian man jailed for faking Kuwaiti citizenship since 1971, which shows how far back some of these files go.

What about Kuwait’s missing archives and property?

The invasion did not just take people. Iraq also took property belonging to Kuwait, including the country’s national archives. Yamashita said some of this has been returned, but progress has been