Charting in detail the evolution of the international rules on the protection of historic and artistic sites and objects from destruction and plunder in war, this 2006 book analyses in depth their many often-overlapping provisions. It serves as a comprehensive and balanced guide to a subject of increasing public profile, which will be of interest to academics, students and practitioners of international law and to all those concerned with preserving the cultural heritage.

At the request of UNESCO, Jiri Toman, Acting Director of the Henry Dunant Institute in Geneva has written this detailed analysis of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict - still the only universal legal instrument in this field. The author has used the materials that emerged from the preparatory work for the Convention and has taken numerous examples from UNESCO’s records about the application of the Convention in conflicts over the last 40 years to illustrate this article-by-article commentary on the Convention itself, the Regulations for its Execution, and its Protocol. The author establishes parallels with other international legal instruments such as the 1977 Protocols Additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions or the other UNESCO conventions relating to cultural heritage and puts forward ideas for a more general study of the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict and the legal and practical ways of achieving this. This work should satisfy the expectations of politicians and those responsible for culture in the countries that are States Parties to the Convention, now numbering more than 80, and of those that are considering becoming parties to it, given the increasing calls being made for the international community to have greater powers to defend the cultural heritage from attacks to which it is too often exposed in armed conflicts today.

In 2009 it was ten years since the adoption of the Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of an Armed Conflict. To celebrate this anniversary, a variety of contributions, focussing on the legal and cultural aspects of the Protocol are presented by Van Woudenberg and Lijnzaad. The innovative aspects of the Second Protocol such as enhanced protection, criminal responsibility and jurisdiction, and the protection of cultural property in armed conflicts not of an international character are addressed. Some country-specific studies are included. It is hoped that this publication will inspire States to accede to the Protocol and that it will serve as a source of inspiration to legal advisers, military personnel and cultural property experts.

Significant attention today focusses on heritage destruction, but the key international laws prohibiting it - the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its First and Second Protocols (1954/1999) - lay out two core strands to limit the damage: the measures of respect for armed forces, and the safeguarding measures states parties should put in place in peacetime. This volume incorporates wide-ranging international perspectives from those in the academy, together with practitioner insights from the armed forces and heritage professionals, to explore the safeguarding regime. Its contributors consider such questions as whether state parties have truly taken "all possible steps", as the Convention tasks them; what we can learn from past practice, and how the Convention is implemented today; the implications of new trends in heritage law and management - such as the rise of the World Heritage Convention, and in the increasing focus on safe havens rather than refuges; whether new methods of heritage management such as Risk Assessment theory can be applied; and, in a Convention specifically focussed on state parties, what of their opponents, armed non-state actors. Using a mix of case studies and theoretical explorations of new and existing methodologies, the contributions cover a broad timespan from World War II to today, with examples from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Overall, the volume's purpose is to promote wider understanding of the practical effectiveness of the Convention in the contemporary world, by investigating the perceived opportunities and constraints the Convention offers today to protect cultural property in armed conflict, and firmly establishing that such protection must begin in peace.

This book analyses the current legal framework seeking to protect cultural heritage during armed conflict and discusses proposed and emerging paradigms for its better protection. Cultural heritage has always been a victim of conflict, with monuments and artefacts frequently destroyed as collateral damage in wars throughout history. In addition, works of art have been viewed as booty by victors and stolen in the aftermath of conflict. However, deliberate destruction of cultural sites and items has also occurred, and the Intentional destruction of cultural heritage has been a hallmark of recent conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, where we have witnessed unprecedented, systematic attacks on culture as a weapon of war. In Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Mali, extremist groups such as ISIS and Ansar Dine have committed numerous acts of iconoclasm, deliberately destroying heritage sites, and looting valuable artefacts symbolic of minority cultures. This study explores how the international law framework can be fully utilised in order to tackle the destruction of cultural heritage, and analyses various paradigms which have recently been suggested for its better protection, including the Responsibility to Protect paradigm and the peace and security paradigm. This volume will be an essential resource for scholars and practitioners in the areas of public international law, especially international humanitarian law and cultural heritage law.

Using contemporary case studies, this book offers a novel legal perspective on the protection of cultural heritage during war.