The Russian Federal Law on Cultural Valuables Displacedto the USSR as a Result of the Second World War and Located on the Territoryof the Russian Federation purports to establish the legal basisfor the Russian state to hold permanent title to the vast majority of thecultural valuables removed from Germany to the Soviet Union at the end of WorldWar II. Russia claims that the cultural objects seized by the Soviet Unionconstitute “compensatory restitution” for the hundreds ofthousands of cultural and artistic valuables seized or destroyed by the Nazisduring the war. This article assesses the compatibility of the Russian claimwith relevant international law. It does so by tracing the development of theinternational antiplunder legal regime. It then assesses the Russian claim withrespect to three categories of cultural valuables, based on prewar ownership:property belonging to private persons and organizations, property belonging tononenemy states, and property belonging to enemy states (Axis powers).“Compensatory restitution” does not exist as a category orprinciple in international law, so the analysis focuses on the legal conceptthat is most similar and therefore of potential relevance, restitution in kind.If restitution in kind is impermissible under international law, then thebroader “compensatory restitution” is, with even greaterforce, also impermissible. The key finding is that international law does notpermit “compensatory restitution,” nor does it permitunilateral seizures of cultural objects under some broader notion ofcompensation.

Summary: Nigeria's national archival institution has been an object of neglect since its reluctant establishment in the colonial era to the present time. It was initially headed by a non-archivist on a part time and ad hoc basis, which blighted its prospects. The uniqueness of the National Archives of Nigeria as the nation's unfailing memory and one of the embodiments of its cultural heritage is not appreciated. There is an urgent need to improve radically the infrastructures of the institution, taking advantage of new technologies offered by the information revolution. Lack of democracy and accountability has been the bane of independent Nigeria. There is obviously a link between this state of affairs and the perilous state of the national and other archival institutions in the country. A sound records-management practice is urgently needed to ensure the managerial accountability so vital to good governance.

The phenomenon of antiquities smuggling is a complicated issue. The lack of official data makes it difficult to do an integrated analysis of the problem. The aim of this article is to present an accurate view of antiquities smuggling in the recent past. After gaining official permission from the Greek police, we examined 246 official arrests made by the Greek Department against Antiquities Smuggling (Athens Office) that occurred between 1999 and 2009. First and foremost, our results revealed that many arrests showed instances of fake antiquities. Moreover, it seems that there is a connection between organized crime and antiquities forgery. In addition, people with higher status are more often involved in antiquities forgery. With respect to the stolen objects, coins were by far the most preferred objects when it comes to forgery, and forgers are also using mostly bronze when it comes to these forgeries. Antiquity looting seems to have many hidden aspects, and the varied natured of antiquities smuggling requires the cooperation of a range of competent authorities and an in-depth investigation of the data, which should be based on the principles of the scientific method.

In 1999 a load of about sixty kilograms of ancient coins, looted from illegal excavations in Bulgaria and falsely declared, were stopped by German customs at the Frankfurt Airport, on its way to the United States. Notwithstanding any rights of ownership or administrative rights to confiscate the smuggled goods, in the end the coins were returned to the dealer. The main weakness proved to be the lack of interest in an “exotic” case like this and a lack of communication among all administrative agencies concerned.

This discussion reviews the differences between traditional Micronesian principles regarding traditional knowledge, or ‘esoteric’ knowledge, and Western copyright laws, which have been used in the expropriation and legal alienation of traditional knowledge. We consider this conflict in relation to contemporary Native American intellectual property issues and tribal responses for the protection of such knowledge and to control research activities. This is compared with the recent international and Pacific Islands governments' concerns and actions regarding commodification and misappropriation of traditional knowledge, including the new Pacific Model Law. Finally, we review the nature of traditional knowledge in Chuuk State and its current status and recommend specific steps that the Federated States of Micronesia might take legislatively to protect traditional knowledge as part of its significant cultural heritage.

Great efforts have been made by representatives of a multitude of countries to rectify the situation currently confronting parties, whether they be private individuals or states, that seek the return of stolen or illegally exported cultural objects. The organization UNIDROIT has been at the forefront of that effort. In June of 1995, representatives of over seventy states met in Rome and adopted the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects. The UNIDROIT Convention will enter into force as it is ratified by individual states.

The UNIDROIT Convention provides a claimant of a Contracting State with the option of using arbitration to settle its dispute. Until now, there has been little discussion of the advantages that international arbitration can bring to this domain. This article focuses on the benefits of international arbitration in facilitating the resolution of cultural property disputes. It presents an in-depth analysis of the text of the UNIDROIT Convention in the context of existing regulations in this area. It then examines three different approaches to international arbitration. These models serve to highlight the particular characteristics of this dispute resolution mechanism that make it ideally suited to cultural property disputes.

The looting of antiquities from archaeological sites has received widespread coverage in the media. Concerns about the loss of heritage have resulted in international multilateral and bilateral agreements intended to prevent the illicit trade in looted antiquities. China has suffered from the looting of its archaeological sites for centuries, but the problem has been exacerbated in recent years because of the increased demand for Chinese antiquities and the consequent sharp increase in market prices. China has requested international assistance to combat the illicit trade in its heritage. It is strange therefore that one of China’s special administrative regions—Hong Kong—also one of the world’s major art markets, retains a “legal absurdity,”1 which may protect the buyer of stolen or looted goods from claims for the return of stolen items. This statutory provision may result in the bizarre outcome that goods stolen from a museum or looted from an archaeological site and then purchased from a shop or market in Hong Kong may be protected from claims for their return; this protection may apply even if the loser is the Chinese state.

The global digital environment and the continuous expansion of digital information about cultural property necessitate a reevaluation of John Henry Merryman’s tripartite typology of cultural property ideals. Merryman put forth those ideals, namely 1.) ensuring the physical preservation of cultural property, 2.) protecting its even-handed interpretation, and 3.) offering public access to cultural property, as the main bases for the settlement of international cultural property disputes. However, new questions have arisen about the status of cultural property in an era when detailed virtual copies of cultural property are instantaneously available. For example, to what extent is digitized cultural property data should itself be regarded as cultural property? This paper will address some of the ethical issues related to the physical preservation, interpretation, and access to this digitized cultural property data. It will conclude with an examination of another type of cultural heritage data: the increasing use of behavioral data about cultural property consumers and audiences as a marketing tool by cultural institutions. This ominous new turn in the commodification of cultural property, it will be suggested, identifies items of cultural significance not only as objects of ownership and sale, but also as a marketable entertainment experience.

Some countries' laws favoring good-faith purchasers over the victims of theft make it difficult to recover stolen artworks. Nonetheless, the loan of such artworks for exhibition abroad may create opportunities to utilize the host country's legal system for recovery. This article examines representative cases illustrating legal options available to plaintiffs in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the United States, laws at the federal and state level may prevent the seizure of artworks loaned for temporary exhibition, but recent cases show that immunity is not absolute and that such artworks may be subject to suit in the United States. The United Kingdom recently enacted a similar law. That law, however, has been criticized, and future interpretations by U.K. courts will be needed before its true affect can be seen. The article also discusses the backgrounds against which the U.S. and U.K. laws were enacted, illustrating the link between the laws and Russian concerns about protecting cultural artifacts that were nationalized after the Russian Revolution or taken by Soviet troops during World War II.

The conviction of Frederick Schultz is the most recent turn in a storm of controversy that began 25 years ago and does not appear to be dying down. Schultz is currently serving a prison term and owes a fine of $50,000 to the United States government. He was convicted under the National Stolen Property Act (NSPA) for conspiring to purchase Egyptian antiquities that, according to Egyptian law, were owned by the Egyptian government. The Schultz case is the latest in an emerging trend whereby the NSPA, enacted to permit criminal federal prosecution for stolen cars taken across state borders, has been applied to help foreign governments with national ownership laws to keep antiquities within their borders.

The global effort to protect indigenous heritage relies on national legislation. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of the United States provides one model for accomplishing a broad agenda of protective measures. NAGPRA confirms indigenous ownership of cultural items excavated or discovered on federal and tribal lands, criminalizes trafficking in indigenous human remains and cultural items, and establishes a process of repatriation of material to native groups. In implementing the law, questions related to cultural affiliation, culturally unidentifiable material, the status of native groups not recognized by the federal government, and the scope of a group's cultural patrimony have been particularly troublesome. A case study of the repatriation process highlights issues in implementing NAGPRA and benefits in fostering consultation and collaboration among native groups, museums, and federal agencies. Finally, the article considers the controversies that have come before a statutory review committee and the federal courts during NAGPRA's first decade. This experience demonstrates the limitations of formal dispute resolution as a means of developing and implementing the law.

Since the publication of the “restitution report” by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy in November 2018, the debate around the restitution of African artifacts inherited from German colonialism in German museums has become increasingly intense. While the restitution debate in Germany is generally focused on “material cultural heritage” and human remains, this reflection attempts to contextualize the “immaterial heritage” (museum collections inventory data, photographs, movies, sound recordings, and digital archive documents) from German colonialism and plead for its consideration in this debate. It claims that the first step of restitution consists of German ethnological museums being transparent about their possessions of artifacts from colonial contexts, which means providing all available information about museum collections from colonial contexts and making them easily accessible to the people from the former German colonies.

This article considers the constant tension facing several national panels in their consideration of Nazi spoliation claims concerning cultural objects. It will argue that this tension results from a shift in paradigms in dealing with Nazi-related injustices—from a strictly legal paradigm to a new victim groups-oriented paradigm, where addressing and recognizing the suffering caused by the nature of past crimes is central. While these national panels originate from this new paradigm and embody the new venues found for dealing with Nazi-looted art claims, this paradigm change at the same time presents these panels with a predicament. It seems impossible to abandon the legalist paradigm completely when remedying historical injustices in the specific category of cultural objects. Through a comparison between the Dutch and United Kingdom (UK) systems, this article will illustrate from both an institutional and substantive perspective that these panels seem to oscillate between policy-based, morality-driven proceedings (new paradigm) and a legal emphasis on individual ownership issues and restitution in kind (old paradigm). This article addresses this tension in order to provide insights on how we could conceptually approach and understand current restitution cases concerning Nazi-looted art in the Netherlands and the UK.

Cultural property is related to the evolution of a nation’s identity. It forms a vital link to the past, wherefrom the present and future may be nurtured and enriched. However, objects related to cultural heritage have been the target of looting and pilfering, resulting in loss to the country concerned. The situation is worsened where these objects have been removed during an era where there were no laws and regulations to control such removal. This article focuses on the loss of cultural property with reference to two specific modes of loss of particular concern to Sri Lanka—the removal of cultural property during the colonial era and the loss of cultural property during the more recent ethnic conflict. Through an analysis of the relevant laws and regulations, this article evaluates Sri Lanka’s rights to its cultural property and its efforts to regain, and preserve, its cultural heritage.

Although cultural heritage management is an inherently retrospective discipline, there is a need for strategic forward thinking. Too many valuable heritage places have been lost because they are not recognized and assessed in time. As cultural heritage management begins to examine modern structures and sites, this paper takes strategic thinking in cultural heritage management one step further and addresses the management of artifactual material created by our closest relatives, the great apes. Given the increasing understanding that chimpanzees have cultures and traditions in tool use, there is a need to recognize their heritage value in reference to human evolution.

Expanding the concept of nonhuman heritage into the future, it is now also time to explore how to deal with the artifacts that the first artificial intelligence (AI)-imbued, self-reflecting robots will create. By extension, which artifacts will be kept along the way? The contemplation of the role of nonhuman heritage will ultimately foster a reappraisal of human heritage. The article outlines some of the conceptual issues that must be addressed if our heritage is to have an ethical future.*Institute of Land, Water and Society. Email: e-mail [email protected]

In the art field the centuries-old concepts of property and state immunity are interwoven in an ambivalent relationship. Immunity rules may constitute a shield for the works of art that have been temporarily sent abroad for exhibition purposes. The obverse of the same coin is that the same rules may thwart the legal actions filed by individuals against foreign states to retrieve art objects lost in the past as a result or in connection with grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law. This article examines this conundrum and argues that the relationship between property rights and immunity rules should be reconceptualised and aligned with the values and priorities of the international community, such as the protection of human rights, the reparation of massive and violent crimes and the respect for cultural heritage.

Many molecular anthropologists no longer incorporate a field component into their research; rather, they rely on analyzing existing data sets and/or on collaborating with field researchers to obtain samples for analysis. This trend in molecular anthropology, combined with the aggressive agenda of the Genographic Project, has an important implication for the future of the discipline. If Native American communities are exposed to genetic ancestry research largely through the Genographic Project, they are less likely to see that there are multiple ways for Native American communities to interact with genetic researchers. Molecular anthropologists are in a position to offer an alternative approach to research by pursuing enduring and mutually beneficial collaborative projects with Native American communities.