ABSTRACT
Cultural heritage protection during armed conflict has become a highly topical issue in the international law and humanitarian discourse. Cultural property, which is historic, artistic and symbolic to humanity, is usually destroyed, looted and lost forever in armed conflicts. The Hague Convention of 1954 on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and its later Protocols, is the first international convention that was devoted to protection of cultural heritage during war. The research paper will analyse the applicability and usefulness of the Hague Convention as a legal tool of securing cultural heritage as well as consider its problems of implementation and enforcement. Through the comparison of historical examples of the destruction of culture, and modern conflicts, this paper brings to the fore how the international law aims at protecting not only physical objects and monuments, but also the identity and the memory of a whole community. Another notable case is the demolition of ancient temples and artifacts in Palmyra, Syria (2015) by the ISIS that brought about urgent questions regarding the suitability of international legal protection under the Hague Convention in contemporary asymmetric warfare.
Introduction: Cultural Heritage and its Protection in the International Law.
The demolition of heritage has always been linked to human warfare, however, the mass pain felt after the demolition of cultural monuments during both World Wars brought about a new international legal awareness. [1]The appreciation of the fact that cultural property is not just nationally important but it is really a common heritage of the entire humankind helped to launch the development of the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Face of Armed Conflict. The treaty was the first international treaty specifically aimed at protecting the heritage during the period of international and non-international conflict. The embracement of adoption was a shift in the doctrine of PIL, and the protection of art, monuments, and archaeological sites as its duty was transformed into a humanitarian and common responsibility[2].
Such an evolution has an ideational underpinning in the reorientation of PIL after World War II that gradually shifted away from state-oriented to humanity-oriented issues. The destruction of Warsaw and Monte Cassino, and other cultural heritage sites during the Second World War had been horrific to the world and this brought to the fore the ineffectiveness of norms in operation. This was reaffirmed by the international duty to preserve the world heritage of books, works of art and monuments of history and science by adoption of the UNESCO Constitution in 1945[3]. All these led to the context of the Hague Convention of 1954, which was a treaty to reconcile the state sovereignty with the universal duty towards the preservation of shared human cultural identity.
[1] “Roger O’Keefe, The Protection of Cultural Property in Armed Conflict 3 (Cambridge Univ. Press 2006)”.
[2]“Francesco Francioni, “The Human Dimension of International Cultural Heritage Law,” 22 Eur. J. Int’l L. 51, 53 (2011)”.
[3] “UNESCO Const. pmbl., Nov. 16, 1945, 4 U.N.T.S. 275”.