6.2 |
Military planning for the invasion, January to March
2003
Parties to
the 1954 Hague Convention agree:
•
to make
provision in times of peace for the protection of cultural property
from
the
foreseeable effects of armed conflict;
•
“to respect
cultural property situated within their own territory as well as
within
the
territory of other [parties to the Convention] by refraining from
any use of the
property
and its immediate surroundings for purposes which are likely to
expose
it to
destruction or damage in the event of armed conflict; and by
refraining from
any act of
hostility directed against such property.
The 1954
Hague Convention imposes explicit obligations on Occupying Powers
to support
“competent
national authorities” of an occupied country to safeguard and
preserve its
cultural
property and where those competent national authorities are unable
to do so,
to take “as
far as possible, and in close cooperation with those authorities,
the most
necessary
measures of preservation”.
The First
Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention, also agreed in 1954,
contains
provisions
banning the export of cultural property from occupied territory and
requiring the
restitution
of such property removed in contravention of the terms of the
Convention.
The Second
Protocol to the Convention contains further reinforcing
provisions:
•
Article 9
imposes, without prejudice to the provisions of the Convention,
an
express
obligation to prohibit and prevent any illicit export or other
removal or
transfer of
cultural property or unauthorised excavation of it;
•
Article 15,
includes provisions requiring parties to the Convention to
impose
criminal
sanctions on persons who, in violation of the Convention and the
Protocol,
make
cultural property the object of attack, use cultural property in
support of
military
action, or cause extensive damage to, vandalise, or steal such
property.
The 1954
Hague Convention and the First Protocol, according to their terms,
entered into
force on 7
August 1956. The Second Protocol entered into force in on 9 March
2004.
The UK, US
and Iraq signed the Convention in 1954. Iraq ratified the treaty in
1967: the
US in 2009.
The UK has not, to date, ratified the Convention or the First
Protocol and it
has not
signed the Second Protocol.
In 1998 the
UK signed, and in 2002, ratified the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the
Means
of
Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer
of Ownership of
Cultural
Property.
Parties to
the 1970 UNESCO Convention agree to outlaw and take measures to
prevent
the
unlawful import, export or transfer of ownership of cultural
property.
On 30
December 2003, the UK enacted the Dealing in Cultural Objects
(Offences) Act
2003, which
made it an offence for any person to dishonestly deal in a cultural
object
‘tainted’
as defined in the Act.
Under the
terms of the Act, a cultural object is “tainted” if its removal or
excavation from
a building,
structure or monument of historical, architectural or
archaeological interest,
(including
any site comprising the remains of a building, structure or of any
work, cave or
excavation)
constituted an offence under the law of the UK or any other country
or territory.
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