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Libricide and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage

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“The fire lasted into the next day, the sun was obscured by the smoke of books, and all over the city sheets of burned paper, fragile pages of grey ash, floated down like a dirty black snow. Catching a page you could feel its heat, and for a moment read a fragment of text in a strange kind of black and grey negative, until, as the heat dissipated, the page melted to dust in your hand.” –Kemal Bakarsic, Chief Librarian of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina

When conflict is discussed, the discussions center around the most obvious casualties associated with the confrontation in question. Most can cite the death toll associated with a conflict, and many can cite with at least some measure of accuracy the most important capital losses. Most know which large identifying architectural treasure was destroyed, and many can tell you the effect on the economy or the surrounding states. Some can cite refugee statistics, and others education statistics. But most will not be able to tell you how many books were looted, lost, destroyed, censored, or otherwise affected by the conflict in question.

Despite the lack of awareness, the destruction of books and cultural property is a very real issue. A consistent occurrence throughout history and irrespective of geographical boundaries, the destruction of papyri, codices, books, and now digital information is a tool used by varying parties in conflicts to control information, destroy culture, and erase or manipulate identity.

An Introduction to Libricide, Biblioclasm, and the Destruction of Books

“As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.” –Milton’s Aeropagitica of 1644

The advancement of humanity directly correlates with the advancement of the book. Jorge Luis Borges notes that, “Of all man’s instruments, the most astonishing is, without any doubt, the book. The others are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his eyes; the telephone an extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of his arm. But the book is something else: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.” The proliferation of books and literacy (though the two aren’t necessarily correlated, as access to books is not the same as the production of them) marches parallel to modernization. Barbara Tuchman highlights this idea in her address to the Library of Congress in 1980: “Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible”.

Brief History of Books

“As long as it holds any books at all, a library represents the whole of human knowledge, and with that immeasurably precious legacy, the possibility for progress…” -Rebecca Knuth

Books themselves began as clay tablets in Mesopotamia. Once characters were wedged into the mud using an instrument called a calamus, the tablets were fired in ovens to dry them out and preserve them. Some tablets, in order to be re-used, were covered in a coating of wax, which could be wedged with characters and erased at the writer’s whim, to be replaced with something else. These clay tablets appeared as early as 3000 BC, but most likely existed much earlier than that. In East Asia, bones, shells, silk, and wood were used as means of recording; in pre-Columbian America, agave and animal hides were used for writing and were protected by wooden covers, before the invention of Amate (a form of bark) paper.

In approximately 2400 BC, papyrus appeared in Egypt. Papyrus was made from the marrow of papyri, produced by a complicated process of pressing, gluing, drying, and cutting. Often papyrus was glued into long sheets and bound around scrolls, and a calamus or bird feather was used with a special ink for recording purposes. Though the word “paper” derives from “papyrus,” it is generally agreed that paper was first invented in China around 105 AD, where books were widely available, both in quantity and at varying price levels.

At some point in history during the intervals between the first century AD and the sixth century AD, the use of codices overtook that of scrolls, though for a while both existed in tandem. A codex is the earliest form of a book and usually consisted of multiple sheets of paper, vellum (parchment made from calf skin), waxed tablets, or papyrus, all stacked together and bound at one edge to allow for the turning of pages. Considered more practical, more durable, and easier to reference, the evolution of our modern-day book began with the dawn of codex popularity. Parallel to the replacement of scrolls by codices was the replacement of papyrus by parchment. Officially known as “pergamineum” but shortened to “parchment,” this material was made by using skins of animals, and vellum is the finest quality of this medium. Parchment, however, was expensive to manufacture and to buy. As papermaking passed from China to the Muslim areas of the Middle East, and from the Muslim areas of the Middle East to Muslim Spain in Cordoba (where there is evidence of paper mills in the 11th century), it eventually gained popularity on the entire continent. (Cordoba later became home to one of the few large libraries in Europe in the Middle Ages, with nearly 400,000 volumes. A generation after the founding of this library, all texts not held sacred to the Islamic faith were burned. Only one of these books survives today). Eventually papermaking reached Italy, where the price reached one-sixth of that of parchment and continued to fall, as materials were more available and production cheaper.

In the beginning of the history of writing, all methods were usually only available in private collections or in libraries. In ancient civilizations, libraries were cultivated as centers of learning. Collections were carefully built and scribes were hired to copy texts, correct texts, and to fill orders for materials. Books were sold at copy centers, where you could request special copies or buy from the popular selections available at the time. In fact, scribes held an annointed place in society: Sumerian scribes had three levels of scribes, and the scribe that achieved the third level of um-mi-ma, or master, was considered above the law. As the Dark Ages commenced, books were largely unavailable, and monasteries were the only places where texts were conserved. As the Dark Ages waned in the 12th century, collections of books became more available as the Renaissance spurred the growth of intellectual havens. Finally, the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century revolutionized the availability of books and the ability of authorship. After the printing press, literature was widely available to a growing audience.

Brief History of Libraries and their Destruction

“The emperors of today have drawn conclusions from this simple truth: Whatever does not exist on paper, does not exist at all.” –Milosz

Different definitions put libraries in very different theoretical places, but physical locations that collect and distribute books and knowledge have existed as long as that knowledge has been recorded. As early as 2800 BCE libraries were found in Ur. Libraries existed in the same region in Fara, Abu Salabik, and Kis, among others. Evidence shows that in 2000 BCE there were libraries in the ancient cities of Isin, Ur, and Nippur. All of these were destroyed or are buried, and it should be noted that the remains are still looted in today’s conflicts in the same region. In the late 20th century the remains of the library at the ancient city of Ebla were discovered. This discovery displayed that even as far back as 2500 BCE, extensive classification systems existed for book collections. Ebla’s collection is estimated to have held tens of thousands of items, all destroyed when the area was destroyed by the King Naramsin of Akkadia.

One of the most famous ancient libraries was that of Asurbanipal of Assyria in Nineveh. During excavations over 30,000 tablets have been discovered, marking Asurbanipal’s library as one of the most extensive, if not the most extensive, at that time.The library was destroyed in the early 600s BCE by the Babylonians. Francisco Baez, who catalogues the destruction of libraries in his A Universal History of the Destruction of Books, notes that of the 233 libraries known to exist in the Near East between 1500 and 300 BCE, none are left in existence.

Another famous library of the ancient world was the library of Persepolis, which housed the Avesta (the holy book of Zoroastrianism). Excavations have produced over thirty thousand tablets and many more fragments. The library and the Avesta were destroyed by Alexander the Great as he moved to conquer Persia.

Ancient Egypt was also a location of libraries and, as described earlier, the home of papyrus, which was the preferred medium for recording of texts for millennia. Baez notes that more than eighty percent of Egyptian literature and science has been lost. The same can be said for Ancient Greece and its books. Constantinople experienced centuries of burned libraries and iconoclasm, or the destruction of religious images as heretical. The sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade in 1204, which witnessed the destruction of manuscripts and damage to the Hagia Sophia, and the siege by Sultan Mahomet in 1453, which saw the sacking of most churches in the city and manuscripts burned or drowned, marked not only the end of Constantinople but also the end of its literary legacy.  Across the entire ancient world, this story is the same. Some destruction was state-sanctioned; some was by war and conquest; others were self-inflicted; and a large segment of books were destroyed in natural disasters or as a result of conflicts that occurred centuries after the book’s inception.

Destruction wasn’t limited to the Near East, however. In China, the experience was the same. Qin Shi Huang, who ascended the throne in 230 BCE, ordered in 213 BCE the destruction of all books in China except those dealing with agriculture, prophecy, or medicine. He ordered all the books that were not of the Legalists (supporters of his regime) confiscated, and ordered his men to go house-to-house burning anything that did not fit into his approved categories. He also ordered literary men burned alive and their families ostracized. After his death, in the conflict surrounding his successor, his own library was destroyed. Even after a period of literary renaissance that paralleled the invention of paper, libraries were destroyed, sometimes by invading Mongol forces, sometimes by dynasty transitions, and once by the Emperor himself, who burned his royal library (containing over 140,000 books) as his capital was seized.

During the Middle Ages, books were often ordered destroyed because they were considered heretical. Queen Isabella of Spain, during the Reconquista, lifted Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros to the position of archbishop of Toledo. In this position he ordered all Muslims to burn their Qurans and other books. It is estimated that at least half of Sufi literature was devastated by the Christians during this time period. King Ferdinand, Isabella’s husband, was disappointed, however, because “books of medicine and philosophy and chronicles” had been spared in the purge.

Though books saw a resurgence in the Renaissance and following the invention of the printing press, they always had enemies. Many books and pamphlets, now readily available, were destroyed because of their content- sometimes it was considered to atheistic, sometimes it was considered too revolutionary, and sometimes it was considered licentious. These copies were usually ordered to be burned or otherwise destroyed, and their authors were forced to find asylum in other countries. During the French Revolution, a movement intended to fight such censorship and centralized control and oppression, little thought was given to the preservation of books or of cultural property. Hundreds of thousands of manuscripts and an unquantifiable number of cultural artifacts were destroyed or lost during the French turmoil. The story is the same with the Spanish and Latin American revolutions in the same century.

As the means of destruction became more devastating, the loss of books followed. Countless items- cultural property and books- were lost in the twentieth century. The Spanish Civil War saw libraries burned and bombed, archives purged, and bookshop owners required to cull their stocks. During the Holocaust and World War II, Nazis persecuted authors, systematically burned books and archives, restricted freedom of the press and the confiscation of material, and destroyed vast collections of information. The book bonfires of May 1933, ordered by Joseph Goebbels, marked the first time any publication (in this instance, Newsweek) used the term “bibliocaust.” Newsweek called it a “book holocaust”. After the bonfires, Goebbels purged all libraries, public and private; prohibited the works of authors; made a list of all condemned artwork, including music and paintings; and created lists of cultural artifacts to be confiscated or destroyed. Goebbels was aided in his crusade by Alfred Rosenberg, the director of the Office for General Supervision of Culture, Ideology, Education, and Instruction. Not only did Germany destroy the books within its own country, but it also destroyed the libraries and cultural property of all countries that it invaded or occupied. Some experts estimate that the loss of books in Poland alone reaches nearly fifteen million.

The phenomenon has not waned with the 21st century. In 2000, libraries were destroyed in then-conflict-ridden Colombia. In Iraq during the war commenced by the United States, millions of books and artifacts were stolen or destroyed. On April 12, 2003, the Baghdad Archaeological Museum was looted, galleries destroyed, and more than 14,000 objects were stolen. On April 14, 2003, a million books in the National Library were burned, and the National Archive, with more than ten million registries from the Ottoman Empire, was also burned. That same April, libraries at the University of Baghdad, the Awqaf Library, the Museum of Natural History in Basra, the Central Public Library, the University Library, and the Islamic Library were all burned. In Mosul and Tikrit, the libraries were looted.

Destruction as a means of Restoration

Humanity has a unique propensity for endorsing the concept of destruction as means of restoration. Fernando Baez, a leading scholar on libricide, notes that, “the destructive ritual, like the constructive ritual applied to the building of temples, houses, or any work, fixes patterns that return the individual to the community, to shelter, or to the vertigo of purity… our affinity for restoring order by means of destroying threats has also grown”. In this passage, “threats” does not simply imply vocal intimidations. “Threats”, here, is intended to represent any physical or non-physical threat to the status quo of the given state. This could thus mean libraries, cultural artifacts, various documents and document collections, schools, universities, or anywhere that harbors intellectual capital.

In addition, it can also stand to mean people themselves. If we extend the definition of library to its furthest limits and include any collection of information, the human mind would suffice to represent a library. If we endorse the idea that every individual human represents a library, we are acknowledging that humans- and the collective knowledge they represent- are mobile temples of memory. As such, they are the ultimate physical threat to the establishment, or the impending group wishing to force establishment. By extension, the intentional destruction of human life as such- individually or en masse- is an instance of libricide and the destruction of cultural heritage.

It is not difficult to see why these threats require elimination if the establishment of a new order is to be successful. The installation of a new establishment requires manipulation of identity, which requires destruction of existing knowledge. Baez notes that: “There is no identity without memory. If we do not remember what we are, we don’t know what we are. Over the centuries, we’ve seen that when a group or nation attempts to subjugate another group or nation, the first thing they do is erase the traces of its memory in order to reconfigure its identity”. This can be seen time and time again, from the destruction of the monastery libraries in the Dark Ages to the active destruction of the artifacts in Syria today. Ultimately, and this is a sentiment shared by many, the group who succeeds in destroying is the group who perseveres.

“Is it true that a nation cannot cross a desert of organized forgetting?” –Kundera

The theoretical framework for book destruction, public or private, sanctioned or otherwise, exists in five stages: restriction, exclusion, censure, looting, and, finally, destruction. In each case of libricide, biblioclasm, or the destruction of property, this evolution of book and artifact destruction is evident. Often the process is regime-sponsored. Sometimes it is religion-sanctioned destruction, and in many cases it is a combination of both.

The study of libricide and biblioclasm has existed since the beginning of the destruction of books and artifacts, though there was no term until Rebecca Knuth coined the term “libricide”  and Fernando Baez independently studied the phenomenon. In the 1990s Gerard Haddad studied “book hatred,” and prior to Haddad, multiple scholars attempted to catalogue the phenomenon of book destruction.

Rebecca Knuth introduced the term libricide in her book of the same name, stating that: “…the kinship between books and humans provides a theoretical framework for libricide, the regime-sponsored, ideologically driven destruction of books and libraries, that is illuminating and meaningful. Libricide, in fact, shares the same theoretical universe as genocide…This book asserts that regimes that commit genocide also destroy the material expressions of their victim’s culture, books, and libraries.” She continued her thesis in her second book, Burning Books and Levelling Libraries. Knuth differs from Baez, who follows the destruction of books throughout history, regime-sponsored or otherwise. Both offer significant contributions to a fledgling field of study.

Existing Legislation

“If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed.” –Omar the Caliph

Until after WWI, it was very rare to find explicit protection of cultural property in legislation dedicated solely to that purpose. It is, however, possible to find allusions to the concept in guides of warfare. In the 1907 Convention (IV) Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its Annex: Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, there are mentions of the destruction of property as a violation of the laws and customs of war. In Section II (Hostilities), Chapter One, Article 23, section G, the 1907 Convention notes that it is forbidden “to destroy or seize the enemy’s property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war.” Article 25 of the same section notes that “The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited,” indicating that if cultural property is undefended or, as noted later in this piece, emblemized as protected and thus undefended, to attack it is forbidden under international law.

Article 27 more explicitly states that: “In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments… provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes. It is the duty of the besieged to indicate the presence of such buildings or places by distinctive and visible signs, which shall be notified to the enemy beforehand.”

The Convention also discusses territory that has been occupied. Provisions in the Convention include Article 47, which formally forbids pillage of occupied territory, and Article 53, which requires the safeguarding of public property of the occupied territory, and includes the provision that these must be administered “in accordance with the rules of usufruct.” The definition of usufruct is: “the right to enjoy the use and advantages of another’s property short of the destruction or waste of its substance.” Finally, Article 56 of the 1907 Convention states that “The property of municipalities, that if institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, even when State property, shall be treated as private property. All seizure of, destruction or wilful damage done to institutions of this character, historic monuments, works of art and science, is forbidden, and should be made the subject of legal proceedings.”

One of the pioneers of the movement to protect cultural monuments was Nicholas Roerich. Roerich, born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1874, was an artist who studied in Russia and worked throughout Europe and America, residing in the latter for a number of years. Roerich was an advocate of culture and of the protection of culture, specifically the obligation of mankind to develop culture and subsequently protect it. Following World War One and suspecting another war, in the early 1930s Roerich developed a pact for the protection of culture in times of conflict. This became known as “Roerich’s Pact,” or, officially, the Treaty on the Protection of Artistic and Scientific Institutions and Historic Monuments. Roerich himself wrote in his journals of the pact, “A pact for protection of cultural treasures is not only needed as an official body, but as an educational law that, from the very first school days, will educate the young generation with noble ideas of preservation of the whole of mankind’s true values.”

The concept was first given legislative form on December 16, 1933 at the Seventh International Conference of American States in Montivideo. The official document was ratified by 21 states of the Americas in Washington DC on April 15, 1935. The Pact recognized cultural property (in this case not defined, as it would later be in the Hague Convention) as neutral ground and therefore respected and protected by “belligerents.” In addition, the Pact established a identifying sign (a red circle with a triple sphere on a white background) to be displayed on such neutral territories, a concept that would be copied in later cultural protection legislation. Roerich’s Pact became the basis for the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of an Armed Conflict.

The first international legislation that focuses solely on the protection of cultural property, including books and libraries, came in the wake of the devastating destruction of cultural property in World War II. In 1954 the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization agreed upon the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of an Armed Conflict, and in 1956 the Convention went into effect.

The preamble states that UNESCO is “…convinced that damage to cultural property belonging to any people whatsoever means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind, since each people makes its contribution to the culture of the world…”

Most importantly, the Convention defines cultural property as:

  • 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;
  • 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 sub-paragraph (a);
  • Centers containing a large amount of cultural property as defined in sub-paragraphs (a) and (b), to be known as ‘centers containing monuments’.

The Convention outlines the processes for the protection of cultural property during conflict, both international and otherwise, as well as procedures to follow in peacetime in preparation for impending conflict.

In the same year, 1954, the First Protocol to the Convention was passed. This Protocol covers the exportation and importation of cultural property into other territories, including procedures for the return of cultural property at the cessation of conflict. It also ensures that “such property shall never be retained as war reparations,” a clear concession to post-World War occurrences.

A Second Protocol to the Convention was passed in 1999, in response to criminal acts against cultural property in the second half of the twentieth century, in addition to various conflicts in the 1990s that resulted in vast destruction of cultural property across the globe. This included the siege of Dubrovnik in Croatia and the destruction of Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina, both acts incurred in the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

The Second Protocol reaffirms the significance of cultural property as military targets, and directs hostile parties to refrain from using cultural property as military objectives. Though it urges states and involved parties to protect cultural property and instill preemptive protections, it also institutes the possibility of “enhanced protection”. Any party that believes a respective cultural property be granted “enhanced protection” status may submit a request for the granting of this status; after review, the status will be granted and the site will be submitted to universal immunity. Furthermore, the Second Protocol offers guidelines for the criminal prosecution of anyone in violation of the guidelines set in the Convention and Protocols. In Chapter Four, Article 15, the Second Protocol outlines what it considers to be “Serious Violations of this Protocol”:

  • Making cultural property under enhanced protection the object of attack;
  • Using cultural property under enhanced protection or its immediate surroundings in support of military action;
  • Extensive destruction or appropriation of cultural property protected under the Convention and this Protocol;
  • Making cultural property protected under the Convention and this Protocol the object of attack;
  • Theft, pillage or misappropriation of, or acts of vandalism directed against cultural property protected under the Convention.

Lastly, Article 24 of the Second Protocol to the Convention establishes the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. This Committee consists of twelve parties and meets once a year, in addition to extraordinary sessions “whenever it deems necessary.” This Committee is responsible for the implementation of the Second Protocol, including but not limited to the granting of “enhanced protection” status and the dissemination of the Fund for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, established in Article 29 of the Second Protocol.

Though the Second Protocol and the initial Convention apply to international and national conflicts, they do not apply to situations of internal disturbances “such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts of violence and other acts of similar nature.” Furthermore, the Second Protocol explicitly states that “Nothing in this Protocol should be invoked as a justification for intervening, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the armed conflict or in the internal or external affairs of the Party in the territory of which that conflict occurs.” This means that a party cannot intervene in a conflict for the reason of protecting cultural property, however devastating the damage. It is evident here that there are significant gaps in international law regarding the protection of cultural property.

The Hague Convention actively has an impact in the international community. In addition to the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property, the Hague Convention resulted in the founding of the International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) to promote the protection of cultural property, as defined above. The symbol agreed upon by the Hague Convention to designate cultural property became known as the Blue Shield, from which this Committee gets its namesake. The ICBS promotes the Hague Convention, encourages the protection of cultural property, trains experts on prevention, control, and recovery from conflicts and disasters, advises bodies on the protection of cultural heritage, and consults with various organizations. The organization has twenty Blue Shield Committees globally and nineteen more are in formative stages. The Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS) as founded in 2008 to coordinate the growing efforts and is headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands. The ICBS actively coordinates the networks of the International Council on Archives (ICS), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Association (CCAAA), a network it uses to collect and share information on threats to cultural property, raise public awareness about damage to cultural heritage, promote risk management at all levels of government and society, and identify resources for disaster prevention and rapid intervention in emergency situations.

In 1970, UNESCO passed the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. This Convention recognizes that it is “essential for every State to become increasingly alive to the moral obligations to respect its own cultural heritage and that of all nations,” and not only states that, within the guidelines of the convention, the export or transfer of ownership of cultural property is illicit, but also urges that all signing parties to the Convention form national services for the protection of cultural heritage. Furthermore, the Convention establishes the following definition for cultural property:

  • Rare collections and specimens of fauna, flora, minerals and anatomy, and objects of paleontological interest;
  • Property relating to history, including the history of science and technology and military and social history, to the life of national leaders, thinkers, scientists and artists and to events of national importance;
  • Products of archaeological excavations (including regular and clandestine) or of archaeological discoveries;
  • Elements of artistic or historical monuments or archaeological sites which have been dismembered;
  • Antiquities more than one hundred years old, such as inscriptions, coins and engraved seals;
  • Objects of ethnological interest;
  • Property of artistic interest;
  • Pictures, paintings and drawings produced entirely by hand on any support and in any material (excluding industrial designs and manufactured articles decorated by hand);
  • Original works of statuary art and sculpture in any material;
  • Original engravings, prints and lithographs;
  • Original artistic assemblages and montages in any material;
  • Rare manuscripts and incunabula, old books, documents and publications of special interest (historical, artistic, scientific, literary, etc.) singly or in collections;
  • Postage, revenue and similar stamps, singly or in collections;
  • Archives, including sound, photographic and cinematographic archives;
  • Articles of furniture more than one hundred years old and old musical instruments.

In 1972, UNESCO adopted the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Whereas the 1956 Hague Convention defines cultural property, the 1972 UNESCO Convention establishes the following definition for cultural heritage:

  • Monuments: architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and combinations of features, which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science;
  • Groups of buildings: groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science;
  • Sites: works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view.

This Convention urged all Member States to establish a protocol for the protection of national and cultural heritage, through various measures. In addition, Section III, Article 8 of the UNESCO Convention establishes the World Heritage Committee, intended to act as an intergovernmental committee for the protection of the cultural and natural heritage of outstanding universal value. It was originally composed of fifteen Member States and meets during the ordinary UNESCO session. It also allowed members of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (Rome Centre), ICOMOS, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) to attend the meetings in an advisory capacity.

As part of the Convention, all parties to the Convention were required at its inception to submit to the World Heritage Committee a full inventory of “property forming part of the cultural and natural heritage” within its borders and suitable for inclusion in the list of properties “having outstanding universal value in terms of such criteria as it shall have established.” The list was to be updated every two years. Per respect of the principles of sovereignty, the inclusion of a site in the World Heritage List requires the consent of its respective Member State. In addition to this general inventory of cultural property, the Convention also calls for a “list of World Heritage in Danger”, which will specifically highlight areas in immediate danger of disappearance or damage. Member States can apply for requests of aid and assistance from the Committee, and the committee will review the requests and determine an order of priorities for its operations. Operations are funded by the Fund for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, also known as the “World Heritage Fund,” established in Section IV Article 15.

At the time of the writing of this piece, there are 1031 properties on the World Heritage List, and 163 Member States party to the Convention. 48 of these properties are on the World Heritage in Danger list.

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” –Heinrich Heine

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