Attacking Identity: Why Cultural Heritage Trafficking Must Be Recognized as Crime Against Humanity
Öz
This article argues that the systematic looting and illicit trafficking of cultural heritage are not ancillary harms or opportunistic crimes but deliberate assaults on collective memory, identity, and human dignity – harms that can occur in both war and peace and that routinely produce psychological, social, economic, and political injury far beyond mere pecuniary loss. While international law now provides comparatively strong, criminalized protection for cultural heritage during armed conflict, peacetime frameworks (notably the 1970 UNESCO and 1995 UNIDROIT Conventions) remain largely remedial and cooperative, focused on restitution rather than criminal accountability. This enforcement gap permits transnational trafficking networks and complicit market actors, including museums, auction houses, and private collectors, to operate with effective impunity. Drawing on recent developments in international criminal jurisprudence and policy, including the ICC Office of the Prosecutor’s Cultural Heritage Policy, the article demonstrates that large-scale, organized trafficking routinely produces the severe, widespread, and long-lasting harms contemplated by Article 7(1)(k) of the Rome Statute. It shows how illicit excavation and market-driven pillage destroy archaeological context, sever communities from intergenerational memory, and inflict serious injury to mental and social health – harms of a character and gravity comparable to other international crimes. The article proposes that recognizing systematic cultural-heritage trafficking as an ‘other inhumane act’ within the crimes against humanity framework would close a critical accountability gap and affirm that the exploitation of shared cultural heritage constitutes conduct of the gravest international concern. Ultimately, it argues that classifying peacetime trafficking as a crime against humanity would provide a crucial legal tool for source nations to safeguard humanity’s shared cultural legacy.
Anahtar Kelimeler
Destekleyen Kurum
Etik Beyan
Kaynakça
- Abimbola HEJM (Minister of Tourism, Culture and Arts of Benin), ‘Cultural Heritage and Diversity in Crisis’ (Speech, UNESCO/ World Conference on Cultural Policies, MONDIACULT 2022, 29 September 2022).
- Abtahi H, ‘The Protection of Cultural Property in Times of Armed Conflict: The Practice of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’ (2001) 14(1) Harvard Human Rights Journal 1.
- Almakky R, ‘The Role of International Organizations in the Development of International Law: An Analytical Assessment of the United Nations’ (2023) 9(28) Law and World 40.
- Ambos K, Treatise on International Criminal Law (Volume II: The Crimes and Sentencing, Oxford University Press 2014).
- Amineddoleh L, ‘The Role of Museums in the Trade of Black Market Cultural Heritage Property’ (2013) 18(3) Art Antiquity & Law 227, 230; Leah J. Weiss, ‘The Role of Museums in Sustaining the Illicit Trade in Cultural Property’ (2007) 25(2) Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 837.
- Al-Ansi A, Lee JS, King B and Han H, ‘Stolen History: Community Concern Towards Looting of Cultural Heritage and its Tourism Implications’ (2021) 87(2) Tourism Management 104.
- Bassiouni MC, Jurisdictional Issues in the International Movement of Cultural Property (Syracuse University College of Law, 1983).
- Bassiouni MC, Crimes Against Humanity: Historical Evolution and Contemporary Application (Cambridge University Press 2011).
Ayrıntılar
Birincil Dil
İngilizce
Konular
Uluslararası Ceza Hukuku, Uluslararası İnsani ve İnsan Hakları Hukuku
Bölüm
Araştırma Makalesi
Yazarlar
Anosh Naderi
*
Australia
Yayımlanma Tarihi
30 Haziran 2026
Gönderilme Tarihi
11 Eylül 2025
Kabul Tarihi
15 Haziran 2026
Yayımlandığı Sayı
Yıl 2026 Cilt: 4 Sayı: 1