Shafaq News- New York/ Baghdad

The United Nations in Iraq said Wednesday that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Mari Yamashita as High-Level Representative to advance efforts on missing Kuwaiti nationals in Iraq.

On X, the UN noted that the appointment took effect on March 31 under Security Council Resolution 2792 (2025), with Yamashita set to continue work on missing persons and related property, including national archives, following the closure of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on December 31, 2025.

According to the statement, Yamashita brings over three decades of UN experience in preventive diplomacy and peacebuilding, most recently serving as acting head of the United Nations Mission to Support the Hudaydah Agreement in Yemen until its closure on March 31, 2026, after earlier holding the Secretary-General’s representative role in Belgrade.

Kuwait has pursued the search for missing nationals in Iraq since 2003, with four main sites —Samawah, Karbala, Ramadi, and Amarah— identified for recovering remains. Fayez al-Anzi, head of the Kuwaiti Association of Families of Martyrs, Prisoners, and Missing Persons, indicated that 294 sets of remains had been returned by August 2024, while 311 individuals remain unaccounted for, including non-Kuwaitis.

The issue dates back to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, when Iraqi forces entered the country on August 2 before the US-led Coalition expelled them after roughly seven months. Iraq later faced a 13-year embargo and paid more than $52 billion in war reparations through the United Nations, completing payments in 2021.