Judicial and Non-Judicial Responses to Destruction of Cultural Property in Post-Conflict States

Post-conflict forms of transitional justice like trials, truth commissions, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition have traditionally concentrated on human rights abuses that endanger the existence or quality of human lives. However, in the last twenty-five years, it has become clear that cultural treasures like monuments, religious buildings, books and shrines may be deliberately targeted for destruction or exploitation by civil war combatants as a means to assert ideological or religious supremacy or as form of war economy through looting and sale.

States are strongly in favour of protecting cultural property not merely because of their historical and artistic importance, but because they are repositories of a people’s identity. The international community has a similarly compelling reason for protecting resources recognised as forming part of humanity’s common heritage to be held in trust for future generations. Because destruction of cultural property can form a war crime and/or a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute, there is a role for criminal proceedings. However, familiar problems of jurisdiction, arrest, mens rea and causation requirements mean few perpetrators will be brought before an international tribunal, while domestic enforcement requires significant commitment of enforcement capacity, judicial resources and political will, and may do little to restore the property in question or to challenge public attitudes that permitted destruction in the first place. Alternative forms of post-conflict accountability must therefore be employed, but heretofore have gone under-analysed. Truth commissions offer obvious potential to document destruction and to engage in social pedagogic exercises that counteract propaganda against cultural forms. If most cultural property is unique, irreplaceable, and so of immense sentimental value to ethnic or religious groups, policy-makers must assess whether reparations schemes premised on restitution, repair or compensation offer any remedy. Both truth commissions and reparations can inform and underpin guarantees of non-repetition that compel the state to give effect of the obligations contained in the numerous declarations, conventional and protocols that legally protect cultural property.

This research project will examine the hitherto under-explored potential for judicial (criminal) and non-judicial (truth commissions, reparations, memory projects and guarantees of non-repetition) to holistically address the destruction of cultural property in contemporary civil wars. It will examine what mechanisms, individually or in combination, best address past cultural vandalism and protect against future wreckage.

For informal enquiries please contact Dr Thomas Horsley – [Email Address Removed]