Significant documents of record recently produced and dealing with cultural property, heritage and related issues will be printed annually in the final issue (No. 4) of each numbered volume. Documents considered for publication may be national, regional, or international instruments and codes. Inquiries or suggestions regarding documentary materials may be addressed to the Chronicles Editor, Kurt Siehr, at 〈[email protected]〉 or the Editor, Alexander Bauer, at 〈[email protected]〉.

In this Act, unless the contrary intention appears:

The Federal Assembly of the Swiss Confederation, Pursuant to Articles 69, para. 2 and 95, para. 1, of the Swiss Federal Constitution, in execution of the UNESCO Convention from November 14, 1970 on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (UNESCO Convention 1970), after having examined the Message of the Federal Council dated November 21, 2001, decides.

Statutory Instruments printed from this website are printed under the superintendence and authority of the Controller of HMSO being the Queen's Printer of Acts of Parliament.

The closing years of the twentieth century and the early years of twenty-first century witnessed remarkable developments in the international attempts to protect the world's cultural heritage. For instance, in 1999 the Second Protocol to the Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict was adopted. In 2001, the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage was adopted whilst 2003 witnessed the adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The United Nations declared 2002, as the UN Year for Cultural Heritage and appointed UNESCO as its Cultural Agent. There is no gainsaying that the UNESCO was faithfully committed to this mandate and discharged its responsibilities satisfactorily. However, the acknowledgment of the fact that lack of information and inadequate appreciation of the UNESCO Conventions on the protection of cultural property remained a formidable obstacle to the realisation of the aspiration of the UN and UNESCO informed the 2003 Abuja Workshop convened primarily to promote the UNESCO Conventions protecting Cultural Property. What follows is report on the 2003 Abuja Workshop.

March 26–27, 2004, in St. Louis, Missouri, the Washington University School of Law's Whitney R. Harris Institute for Global Legal Studies and the School of Art hosted the Imperialism, Art and Restitution Conference. The conference brought together many of the world's leading experts on art and antiquities law, museum policy, and the larger cultural context surrounding these fields. The conference organizers chose several particularly controversial case studies to generate debate and discussion around the issues of whether Western states and their museums should return major works of art and antiquities, acquired during the Age of Imperialism, to the countries of origin. The case studies included the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles, the Bust of Nefertiti, and objects protected by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The format produced a lively, interdisciplinary, and sometimes passionate debate that helped crystallize issues and expose complexities but certainly produced no consensus around a simple solution of return or retain.

The Istanbul Initiative was established in 2003 in response to concerns raised by the continuing episodes of cultural destruction that have accompanied armed conflicts in Cambodia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, and Iraq. The Initiative is comprised of Turkish academics, lawyers, and media professionals who aim to raise international awareness of the destruction of cultural heritage during wartime. Their first action was to organize the symposium A Future for Our Past in Istanbul from June 24 to 26 2004. The immediate impetus for the symposium was provided by the large-scale looting of museums, libraries, and archaeological sites that followed the Coalition invasion of Iraq in April 2003.

In the last decade of the twentieth century three UNESCO/ICOM regional workshops were held in Africa (Arusha, Tanzania in 1993, Bamako, Mali in 1994 and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996) on the fight against illicit trafficking of cultural property. In the first decade of this century already two UNESCO regional workshops have been held in Africa on the same theme. The first was held in Abuja, Nigeria in 2003, and the second, which is the focus of this report, in Cape Town, South Africa in September 2004.

Even now in 2006, sixty years after the end of World War II, the subject of cultural assets seized under Nazi persecution (“looted art”) and displaced during the war (“trophy art”), continues to be of interest to politicians, historians, legal experts, and many others. Thus, at a meeting in January 2005, Germany's Advisory Commission for the return of cultural assets seized as a result of Nazi persecution, particularly those cultural assets removed from Jewish ownership, recommended the return of four paintings presently in the possession of the Federal Republic of Germany to the community of heirs of Julius Freund. Also in January 2005, Germany's government, all federal states and central organizations of municipalities called on German public bodies not to slow down in their search for cultural assets seized as a result of Nazi persecution and to report any items found to the Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste (Coordination Office for Lost Cultural Assets) for display as part of its Internet database www.lostart.de. Furthermore, in February 2005, Franz von Lenbach's painting “Prinzessin zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn” which had been seized by the Nazis was identified through www.lostart.de and returned to the heirs of Bernhard Altmann. The painting was part of the Remaining Stock CCP (“Linzer Liste”) within www.lostart.de enlisting cultural objects with provenance gaps in the administration of Germany's Bundesamt zur Regelung offener Vermögensfragen (Federal Office for the settlement of ownership issues). The object was on loan from the Bundesamt and in possession of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Köln (Germany).

Book notes.

Chronicles: January 1, 2004––December 31, 2004.

Index to Volume Twelve.