Cultural Heritage and Human Rights

Why It Matters

When genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity occur – often the very last issue of importance is that old buildings, artworks, and memorials have been destroyed. Healing those traumatized, financing immediate reconstruction efforts of basic necessities, and investigating atrocity crimes already take up large resources. Why devote any time to property that may already only have been commemorative archeological ruins or a decorative tangible item of the community?

When atrocities occur, vandalism of cultural heritage validly takes up only a sliver of any focus because the other human rights violations are in dire need of repair, reparation, and justice. Yet, a sliver of focus is important for this very reason: atrocities often occur in order to destroy, obliterate, humiliate, and forget those who were targeted.

Cultural heritage is the memory of not only the people who suffered and lost their lives, but also their ancestors: the very beliefs, languages, and cultural expressions that made the groups a cohesive distinct community. What’s more, a sliver of focus on cultural heritage during and after atrocity crimes can: 1) provide the necessary pride in order to re-build the community, 2) give awareness of the importance of the community destroyed and, thus re-construct the intangible heritage; and 3) provide added evidence of the intent to destroy a community that can bring about justice.

Cultural Heritage of Universal Value

During the inter-war period, the Polish lawyer, Rafael Lemkin, coined the term genocide. In his Acts of Vandalism he also defined why the systematic destruction of art and cultural heritage was an attack on humanity as a whole. In particular, this kind of policy to eradicate tangible cultural heritage aimed at the rapid and complete disappearance of the cultural, moral, and religious life of a group of human beings.

He went on to explain that such destruction throws the evolution of ideas back to the bleak period of the Middle Ages. “Such acts shock the conscience of all humanity, while generating extreme anxiety about the future. For all these reasons, acts of vandalism and barbarity must be regarded as offenses against the law of nations.”

[T]he destruction of a work of art of any nation must be regarded as acts of vandalism directed against world culture. The author [of the crime] causes not only the immediate irrevocable losses of the destroyed work as property and as the culture of the collectivity directly concerned (whose unique genius contributed to the creation of this work); it is also all humanity which experiences a loss by this act of vandalism.

The United Nations Human Rights Council Explains The Importance of Cultural Heritage Rights

In 2015, Professor Karima Bennoune, Special Rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council in the field of Cultural Rights, reported on the intentional destruction of cultural heritage as a violation of human rights. She said it is impossible to separate a people’s cultural heritage from the people itself and that people’s rights. Tangible heritage (such as artefacts) are intertwined with intangible heritage (such as language, religion, cultural expressions).

Acts of international destruct harm all. Aiming at homogenization of world views, they contribute to intolerance and tensions between people, and deprive all humanity of the rich diversity of heritage that should be transmitted to future generations.

Ultimately, destruction of cultural heritage seeks to eradicate identity and cultural memory.

The Disappearance of Cultures Has Happened Many Times in History

It is extremely rare for a cultural community to be both deliberately destroyed through genocide and leave absolutely no descendants or assimilated survivors. If total annihilation occurred (the Native Americans in Mesa Verde, Colorado or the inhabitants of Easter Island come to mind) we will never know. However, cultures and communities that did become extinct included:

• The Elamites of ancient Mesopotamian civilization in southwestern Iran were fully replaced by Persian culture.

• The Etruscans political, religious, and linguistic extinction also occurred due to the gradual Roman conquest, and

• The Phoenicians and their Punic civilization due to the Roman suppression of their language & religion, Carthage being razed, and the population killed or enslaved.

• European colonization also resulted in the destruction of hundreds of indigenous communities.

In a globalized world of the 20th Century, cultural erasure occurs every fourteen days with the death of a language. See Death of a language: understanding endangered languages and language extinction.

International Organizations Dedicated to Cultural Heritage Rights

International law and international institutions exist that attempt to stop the destruction of cultural heritage, whether the heritage is tangible or intangible. In particular, after World War II, the destruction of property, including entire cities, prompted the international community to address cultural heritage by creating the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). By 1954, this organization promulgated the Hague Convention, a "constitution" if you will that formulated the idea of humanity's common heritage. See a history of UNESCO and the Hague Convention.

Since then, the United Nations Human Rights Council established a Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights. Through their work, Resolution 33/20 was adopted in 2016, addressing the importance of protecting cultural heritage.

Next week, we'll look at a brief history of cultural heritage in international law and, thereafter, discuss the first international criminal trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against an individual who destroyed cultural property.

But today's post is about why study international cultural heritage law and human rights. For this, we discussed why and now we end with what. The Hague Convention provides the definition of cultural property in Article 1:

Article 1. For the purposes of the present Convention, the term "cultural property" shall cover, irrespective of origin or ownership:

(a) movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people, such as monuments of architecture, art or history, whether religious or secular; archaeological sites; groups of buildings which, as a whole, are of historical or artistic interest; works of art; manuscripts, books and other objects of artistic, historical or archaeological interest; as well as scientific collections and important collections of books or archives or of reproductions of the property defined above;

(b) buildings whose main and effective purpose is to preserve or exhibit the movable cultural property defined in sub-paragraph (a) such as museums, large libraries and depositories of archives, and refuges intended to shelter, in the event of armed conflict, the movable cultural property defined in subparagraph (a);

(c) centres containing a large amount of cultural property as defined in sub-paragraphs (a) and (b), to be known as "centres containing monuments".

Listen to this Podcast about Patty Gerstenblith on Culture Heritage as collateral damage in war.