THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK GOVERNING THE DESTRUCTION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE IN ARMED CONFLICT

Abstract

This study offers an analysis and discussion of the existing laws and enforcement framework governing the protection of cultural heritage during armed conflict and beyond. The study takes as its starting point the treaty framework and customary law that has emerged in response to the growing use and instrumentalization of culture and cultural rights as a weapon of warfare, with a particular focus on the wars that have ravaged ancient heritage sites and dispossessed communities. Given its broad and synoptic scope, the study will explore and critically discuss the most pressing challenges posed by the heritage destruction phenomenon, spanning the ideological components of cultural genocide in modern conflicts; the narrow and doctrinal approach to issues of state responsibility and military necessity; institutional fragmentation under the UNESCO regime, all the way through to the current UN sanction regime on trafficking and the relationship between heritage protection and post-conflict reconstruction. The study does, however, find cause for optimism including by examining key advances in the ICC's and UN's response to cultural destruction in Mali and develops a broad overview of remaining challenges and possibilities of an international cultural heritage regime that is sensitive to cultural particularities, while remaining able to build a transnational consensus around the linkages between human and cultural rights and between the needs of affected local communities and the global interest in defending heritage against its misuse and destruction. The study, therefore, concludes by offering its recommendations and concrete reform measures regarding the legitimacy and effectiveness of the existing international regime.