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Abstract
In the throes of war, protecting such cultural heritage as the Bamiyan Buddhas, the Mostar Bridge, the Timbuktu libraries and Palmyra supposedly is a priority on the international public policy agenda; but government responses so far have been limited to deploring such destruction. This article explores the evolving, albeit contested, norm of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) and its relevance for cultural heritage. There is no need for a hierarchy of protection – civilians or culture – because the juxtaposition is as erroneous as choosing between people and the environment. This essay begins with a discussion of cultural heritage and defines the scope for the application of any new international normative consensus. It then explores why R2P, in the original concept of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), is an appropriate framework for thinking about cultural protection, despite considerable political headwinds. It then examines the current opportune political moment and existing legal tools. Finally, there is a brief consideration of the obstacles facing the creation of a better framework for cultural protection in zones of armed conflict.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the J. Paul Getty Trust for support in the research that resulted in this essay.46
Notes
Notes
1 UNESCO, “Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova Firmly Condemns.”
2 UNESCO, Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
3 UNESCO, Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing.
4 UNESCO, Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
5 UNESCO, Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing.
6 Merryman, “Two Ways of Thinking about Cultural Property.”
7 Barkan, “Amending Historical Injustices.”
8 Appiah, “Whose Culture Is It?” See also Held, Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities; Beardsworth, Cosmopolitanism and International Relations Theory; and Etzioni, Happiness Is the Wrong Metric.
9 MacGregor, “To Shape the Citizens.”
10 Throsby, “Culture in Economic Development.”
11 del Castillo, Obstacles to Peacebuilding.
12 Perry, “Cultural Heritage Protection.”
13 Bevan, Destruction of Memory, 24.
14 UNESCO, “Reinforcement of UNESCO’s Action.”
15 Lemkin, Totally Unofficial.
16 UNESCO, “Reinforcement of UNESCO’s Action.”
17 Exemptions are for ‘military necessity’ in UNESCO 1954, Article 4. Similar language appears in Hague IV, Article 27.
18 Knuth, “China’s Destruction of the Libraries of Tibet.”
19 See Clapperton, Jones, and Smith, “Iconoclasm and Strategic Thought.”
20 UNESCO, “Reinforcement of UNESCO’s Action.”
21 Bevan, The Destruction of Memory. This position was also adopted in a dissenting opinion in the ICC case between Croatia and Serbia in the “Dissenting Judgment of Judge Cançado Trinidade.”
22 Moses, “Raphael Lemkin, Culture, and the Concept of Genocide.”
23 Annan, “Two Concepts of Sovereignty.”
24 ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect.
25 Weiss, “The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Modern Diplomacy.”
26 For interpretations by commissioners, see Evans, Responsibility to Protect; and Thakur, United Nations, Peace and Security. For commentaries, see Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect; Orford, International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect; and Hehir, Responsibility to Protect.
27 UN, World Summit Outcome; Ban, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect. The interpretation of one of this paper’s authors is Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention.
28 ICISS, Responsibility to Protect, ix and 23.
29 Ibid., 39.
30 Sahnoun, “Foreword.”
31 For updates on the numbers, see Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, “R2P References.”
32 UN General Assembly, “General Assembly ‘Appalled’ by Edict.”
33 Romey, “Antiquities Chief.”
34 Moore et. al, “Letter to the Editor.”
35 Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood, 90.
36 Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague, IV), Articles 27 and 56.
37 UN General Assembly, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
38 UNESCO, Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
39 Deng, “Frontiers of Sovereignty”; and Deng, “Reconciling Sovereignty with Responsibility.” For more details, see Weiss and Korn, Internal Displacement.
40 Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.”
41 Merryman, “Two Ways of Thinking about Cultural Property.” See also Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity?, 50–1, 65, 68–71, and 124–6; Cuno, Museums Matter, 11–31; and Barkan, “Amending Historical Injustices.”
42 Merryman, “The Nation and the Object.”
43 Mamdani, “Responsibility to Protect.”
44 See Cooper, Jorge Heine, and Ramesh Thakur, Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy.
45 Middle East Institute, Asia Society, and the Antiquities Coalition, “Culture under Threat.”
46 Bokova, “UNESCO’s Role in Emergency Situations.”
47 Weiss and Connelly, Cultural Cleansing and Mass Atrocities.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Thomas G. Weiss
Thomas G. Weiss is Presidential Professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center and Andrew Carnegie Fellow whose latest book is Would the World Be Better without the United Nations? (Cambridge: Polity, 2018); he is also an Eminent Scholar at Kyung Hee University and has written extensively about multilateral approaches to international peace and security, humanitarian action, and sustainable development.
Nina Connelly
Nina Connelly is a research associate at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies of the CUNY Graduate Center, where she is a PhD in political science.