Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Emma CunliffeORCiD
Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.
As this article goes to press, the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954 Hague Convention) is receiving renewed attention leading up to its 70th anniversary, and a re-evaluation of whether it is fit for purpose given 70 years of ratification and technological changes is timely. This article addresses this question in light of reviews conducted before and after the creation of the 1999 Second Protocol, which identified issues and suggested improvements. It is based on a study of state practice, and on over a decade of studying cultural destruction in conflict, and as a trainer of national and multi-national armed forces in cultural property protection. What can the “on the ground” perspective of law in practice bring to the debate? This article draws on seven years of my own and colleagues’ experiences training armed forces in cultural heritage protection with the NGO the Blue Shield, both its international arm, where I am part of the Secretariat, and as a member of the UK National Committee, to provide new insights. In his 1993 landmark review of the Convention, written as it approached its 40th anniversary, Boylan argued that the Convention and Regulations were “still entirely valid and realistic as international law, and remain applicable and relevant to present circumstance” (Boylan, 1993: 7), but he identified several issues. I argue that the creation of the 1999 Second Protocol has failed to solve these issues, and that many – in particular, parts of the ongoing debate regarding military necessity – are based on failure to understand the framework in which armed forces operate and the reality of conflict, and that the legal framework of the Convention (largely) deals with them adequately. Rather, the critical problems with the Convention (other than lack of will to apply it) are the two circumstances where the Convention’s application is problematic – situations of non-state-on-state conflict where armed forces may be deployed (against armed non-state actors, in peacekeeping, counter-insurgency, etc); and in occupation. In many other cases, cultural destruction is a direct result of state party and heritage sector failure to correctly implement the Convention as much as it is a result of the military conduct of the conflict. I demonstrate that the Convention is now limited by lack of political will and led by the heritage sector or the legal advisors within government, rather than by a proactive partnership of defence and culture envisaged by the Convention, resulting in poor implementation and misunderstandings of the drafters’ intent. The article concludes by looking at the future of the Convention and its Protocols. Today it is placed awkwardly amongst or is subsumed into other competing concepts and agenda – human security, protection of civilians, emergency response, and cultural rights, to name a few. As a result, the fundamentally pragmatic nature of the Convention, designed to limit the inevitable realities of conflict identified after two World Wars and a civil war, has now largely been lost. The Convention is now often seen as a failed panacea to all the problems of cultural property protection, rather than the manual the drafters intended for states and their armed forces to interpret in good faith.
Author(s): Cunliffe E
Editor(s): Maget Dominicé A; Vigneron S; Ulph J;
Publication type: Book Chapter
Publication status: In Press
Book Title: Elgar Research Handbook on Art, Culture, and Heritage
Year: 2025
Acceptance date: 09/01/2024
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Place Published: Cheltenham
