12 - Cultural Property Shelter Systems: The Swiss Model

Summary

Switzerland has long appreciated the importance of prevention when it comes to safeguarding its cultural heritage. Consequently, the country's first national law on the protection of cultural property, enacted in 1966, drew heavily on Articles 1 and 3 of the 1954 Hague Convention for theProtection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. When the federal government ratified the Second Protocol in 2004 (FOCP 2004), it stressed that the legal system of Switzerland, as it currently stands, already meets the requirements stipulated in the Second Protocol.

The federal law contains provisions on the measures required under the international treaty but adapted certain organisational and substantive elements to accommodate the specific features of the Swiss system of government. These measures include the development of a national cultural property inventory, the systematic planning and creation of comprehensive safeguard documentation and microfilms, and the provision of protective facilities for important cultural collections. Violations of the rules governing cultural property protection are covered by the Military Criminal Code, while the Ordinance to the Federal Act on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict contains provisions on the introduction of preventive measures.

Switzerland's federal structure (Swiss Confederation, 2020) means that its constituent elements – the 26 cantons – are responsible for implementing the law. From the outset the federal government has encouraged the cantons to introduce preventive measures by providing them with generous financial support towards the construction of purpose-built cultural property shelters. Today, 50 years on from the entry into force of the legislation, Switzerland has a network of more than 300 decentralised cultural property shelters, meeting the definition of refuges under the 1954 Hague Convention, all of which meet the requisite government rigorous technical and structural specifications. Alongside these ‘conventional’ protective facilities, the federal government also operates a number of safe havens for endangered cultural artefacts. What follows is a presentation of these protective infrastructures and a description of Switzerland's distinctive shelter system.

CULTURAL PROPERTY SHELTERS

It was against the backdrop of the Cold War and the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction that Switzerland began developing a nationwide system of protective structures in the mid-1960s. Alongside shelters for the population and protected facilities for use by the government, military command, and civil protection organisations, the system comprises refuges for important movable cultural artefacts.