UN Secretary General’s Personal Envoy for Cyprus, María Ángela Holguín, is beginning a fresh round of contacts on the island with the community leaders, namely Cyprus President, Nikos Christodoulides, and Turkish Cypriot leader, Tufan Erhurmam.
Holguin who arrived on the island on Thursday evening is set to meet Erhurman on Friday at 1100 am local time. On Saturday at 1000 am she will be received at the Presidential Palace by President Christodoulides.
On December 11, the two leaders will visit the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) and will hold a meeting with Holguin.
UNSG’s envoy participated, via a videoconference, in the first meeting that President Christodoulides and Erhrman held last month.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third. Repeated rounds of UN-led peace talks have so far failed to yield results due to Turkish intransigence. The latest round of negotiations, in July 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana ended inconclusively.
In 2025 the Secretary-General hosted two informal meetings on Cyprus, in March in Geneva and in July in New York, while a tripartite meeting with the Cyprus leaders was also held in late September, at the end of the UN General Assembly High Level Week. An informal meeting in broader format is expected to take place.
María Angela Holguín, the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy on Cyprus, is tasked to engage with the parties, while former European Commissioner Johannes Hahn, designated by the Commission as Special Envoy for Cyprus, is also expected to contribute to the settlement process, in cooperation with Holguín.