J. Hladik
(Programme Specialist, International Standards Section, Division of Cultural Heritage, UNESCO Paris, France)
This presentation focuses on the evaluation of the implementation of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict 1954 (“the Convention”) in the last fifty years. It is divided into three parts.
The first part provides the main reasons behind the determination of the international community to adopt the Convention such as the experience of the Second World War and the related damage to cultural heritage. It also very briefly mentions the pre-Second World War legal instruments protecting cultural property in the event of armed conflict.
The second part analyses the implementation of the Convention in the last fifty years and attempts to identify the main reasons concerning the relatively moderate quantitative and qualitative increase in the number of States party to the Convention.
Finally, the third part deals with the implementation of the Convention, and, in particular, the experience of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, the review of the Convention, the subsequent adoption of the Second Protocol and its main tenets. It also gives some examples of Secretariat’s activities aimed at making the Convention and its two Protocols better known and possibly one day universally accepted.
