After fears that ISIS sold off cultural artifacts in Nimrud in Iraq before destroying the site, a University of Kent legal expert has given evidence to the House of Lords about protecting cultural property.
Dr Sophie Vigneron, of Kent Law School, offered written evidence to members of the Public Bill Committee on the Cultural Property (Armed Conflict) Bill on November 14. This Bill aims to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two Protocols.
In her advice on the offence of dealing in unlawfully exported cultural property, Dr Vigneron stated the proposed law would mean that key countries could be excluded – like Angola, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Eritrea, Rwanda, Sudan, United Republic of Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, which have recently had civil unrest.
With regard to compensation to buyers of unlawfully exported cultural property, Dr Vigneron explains that the proposed Bill’s reference to ‘good faith and without knowledge’ is not conducive of a higher standard of care by buyers or traders in the art world. Instead it encourages prospective buyers to refrain from asking questions so that they do not know that the items were unlawfully removed. Questions such as: ‘Where does the object come from? When was the object imported into the United Kingdom? Does the object have a valid export licence?’ Dr Vigneron concluded by saying that practices such as gentlemen’s agreements, unwritten contracts, secret prices and anonymous parties should not be the norm.
Dr Vigneron is the author of several articles on the protection of cultural heritage at a national and international level, and has acted as a consultant for the Council of Europe on several occasions.
She has also been an observer to the Meeting of States Parties to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property in June 2012.