When the idea of heritage conservation arises, one specific facet of the ensuing reflection is bound to emerge at some stage: the (inevitable) tension between property rights, on the one hand, and the right to culture (of which heritage conservation is an aspect), on the other. This tension intensifies when the cultural material to be conserved concerns a traditionally sensitive issue—that of the burial places of the ancestors of people designated in the South African context as previously disadvantaged.

UK museums are required to present themselves as the ethical guardians rather than simply the owners of their collections (Museums Association Code of Ethics principles 1.0 and 1.3). Museums which are members of the International Council of Museums are required, when acquiring objects for their collections, to ensure that they obtain valid title, rather than simply strict legal title, to the object (ICOM Code of Ethics, principle 2.2). This notion of valid title focuses on the relationship between the current possessor (the museum) and the object. However, one can also see the concept of claimants having moral claims to cultural heritage objects developing in the context of the notion of the “rightful owner” which is a term increasingly deployed to signify the person who has a valid moral, rather than legal, claim to the cultural heritage object (Seventh Report of the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee 1999-2000 [193]).

Since 2000 the UK has introduced mechanisms to resolve, in limited circumstances, moral claims to cultural objects of which their owners were dispossessed during the Nazi era. This paper analyses the way in which a concept of moral title can be seen to have developed in the context of the resolution of Nazi era claims by the UK’s Spoliation Advisory Panel. To this end the paper analyses: how far the moral entitlement is linked with the legal title to the object; and whether moral title arises from the morally abhorrent dispossession that befell the claimant or his ancestor or whether it results from the recommendation of the Spoliation Advisory Panel. It is argued that the development of the notion of moral title poses challenges for the future, but an understanding of its role may also inform the resolution of disputes involving cultural heritage objects outside the context of the Nazi era.

Scholars argue for greater law enforcement resources for art fraud and forgery investigations, yet these victims rarely report their victimization. While fraud victims generally report at lower rates than street crimes, statistics show they do come forward. Using Niels Christie’s ideal victim theory, this article will argue that art fraud victims occupy a lower position in a hierarchy of victims—where some are more worthy of justice, social support, and public sympathy—than those of other kinds of fraud. This may be due to their perceived personal shortcomings and participation in a market that leaves openings for fraud. Public antipathy toward art fraud victims and the silence of the art community may contribute to what many view as insufficient law enforcement resources for investigations because of the collaborative nature of community policing in many Western countries. Increased reporting and communication with law enforcement could address this problematic cycle.

This article focuses on the issue of framing of food in international law, as a means to highlight the specific dimensions of food that are the focus of food as heritage under the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The specific example of Mexican traditional cuisine is used as a prism through which to analyze regulatory choices across a range of organizations in the United Nations System, yielding a number of frames: food as heritage, food as a human right, food as indigeneity, food as biodiversity, and food as a regulatory object. The frames are natural consequences of the mandates of the bodies addressing food, and the article argues that food as heritage needs to be more clearly engaged with other dimensions of food in international law, lest food becomes just a tourist attraction under the intangible heritage regime.

The present article discusses perceptions of cultural heritage and the development of heritage management in Ethiopia against the background of various pieces of legislation. Compared to many colonized countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the enactment of laws for the protection and preservation of cultural heritage is a recent phenomenon in Ethiopia. Even though archaeological research in Ethiopia dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, there have been no formal heritage laws or scientific restoration programs until 1966. However, living heritage, which is economically and spiritually beneficial to the local communities, has been protected and preserved with TMSs in communities such as Yeha, Konso, and Lalibela. Unlike Western management systems that emphasize the authenticity and integrity of physical features, the TMSs of Ethiopia have focused on the ideals and thoughts of the agencies that produce the cultural heritage. It had its own implications, to say, while retaining the ideological aspects, most built heritages in Ethiopia have been subjected to considerable physical interventions. Such physical interventions have disregarded structural authenticity and integrity of the monuments. Due to foreign invasions, continuous civil conflicts, and sporadic famines in the past, attention to cultural heritage and the implementation of heritage legislation has been negligent. However, Ethiopia has witnessed growing interest in the conservation and preservation of its heritage—cultural and natural; tangible and intangible—during the last twenty years. With the support of international collaborators, the Ethiopian government has initiated several measures to protect its heritage assets.

Singapore is not well known for its archaeological heritage. In fact, chance finds in the early twentieth century and systematic archaeological excavations since the 1980s conducted at sites around the Singapore River have unearthed artifacts shedding light on the island's early history. In addition, the value of archaeology for a deeper knowledge of Singapore's British colonial past is increasingly being recognized. Nonetheless, Singapore law provides only a rudimentary framework to facilitate archaeological investigations and protect cultural artifacts. This article considers how the National Heritage Board Act (Cap. 196A, 1994 Rev. Ed.), the Planning Act (Cap. 232, 1998 Rev. Ed.), and the recent Preservation of Monuments Board Act 2009 (No. 16 of 2009, now Cap. 239, 2011 Rev. Ed.) may be strengthened in this regard.

Shortly following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an American mobile exploitation team was diverted from its mission in hunting for weapons for mass destruction to search for an ancient Talmud in the basement of Saddam Hussein's secret police (Mukhabarat) headquarters in Baghdad. Instead of finding the ancient holy book, the soldiers rescued from the basement flooded with several feet of fetid water an invaluable archive of disparate individual and communal documents and books relating to one of the most ancient Jewish communities in the world. The seizure of Jewish cultural materials by the Mukhabarat recalled similar looting by the Nazis during World War II. The materials were spirited out of Iraq to the United States with a vague assurance of their return after being restored. Several years after their arrival in the United States for conservation, the Iraqi Jewish archive has become contested cultural property between Jewish groups and the Iraqi Jewish diaspora on the one hand and Iraqi cultural officials on the other. This article argues that the archive comprises the cultural property and heritage of the Iraqi Jewish diaspora.

This article reviews the shift in cultural property litigation in the United States over the past twenty-five years from private replevin actions, in which the original owner sues the current possessor and must bear the costs as well as overcome procedural and logistical obstacles, in particular the statutes of limitation, to civil forfeiture actions instituted by the U.S. government to obtain restitution. The article then analyzes recent cases that arguably illustrate over-enforcement of the law through the use of unclear legal standards in civil forfeiture. It then turns to shortcomings in the effectiveness of U.S. law, in particular the difficulty in imposing emergency import restrictions in the cases of Iraq and Syria, and an over-emphasis on the use of civil forfeiture, which has largely replaced criminal prosecutions in the cultural property arena—but without which there is no true deterrent to trafficking in illegal cultural objects.

The struggle for indigenous rights to pre-Hispanic cultural heritage parallels the struggle for indigenous land rights in Belize. By Belizean law, material objects and sites of activity older than 100 years in age are the property of the state. Similarly, land inhabited by indigenous communities in southern Belize is held in trust by the government. In 2007 the community of Santa Cruz in southern Belize won customary land tenure over their lands for the first time from the Belizean government. This change in land ownership presents new challenges to the definition of ownership of ancient places in Maya territory. In particular, the transfer of land rights to the community has potential implications for the ownership and management of the local pre-Hispanic site of Uxbenká that may ultimately serve as a paradigm for the future relationship between Maya peoples and ancestral remains throughout the nation.

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.

This article discusses the Allied diplomatic and political impasse over restitution during and after World War II. The focus is on cultural restitution—the return of art, archives, and libraries looted by the Nazis. Serious Allied disagreements on general postwar policy for Germany inhibited the development of a coherent approach to the restitution of cultural property. Cultural restitution became lost in the maze of other greater political, economic, and ideological conflicts. Ultimately, the impasse was also fueled by the very complex issues involving cultural restitution itself. Issues including the scope of the entire effort, restitution in kind, returning property to refugees, and the fate of heirless Jewish property were intractable. The problems with cultural restitution reflected the clash of interests and ideologies. As a result, the four occupying powers had distinct approaches with radically differing results.

Intangible cultural heritage elements are shared across state borders. In many instances, states join in multinational nominations to inscribe the heritage element in a way that reflects this reality. But, at times, states are unwilling or unable to cooperate in a mutual nomination that reflects the shared nature of the heritage element. The consequence of this is that heritage elements can then be nominated by individual states without any reflection of the multinational or cross-border nature of the element; thus leaving the heritage elements shorn of this aspect of their nature. The current international heritage legal regime, through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, does not adequately acknowledge or address this problem. This article, through a case study of the successful nomination by Azerbaijan of the horseback game of chovqan, examines the causes and consequences of these “fractured resemblances.” It analyzes the links between cultural heritage, conflict, and the use of heritage as a form of soft power. It focuses on the use of single-state inscription as a soft-power means of obtaining international prestige and support and the resultant effects on shared cultural heritage elements. From this, suggestions for changes to international heritage laws for the inscription of cultural heritage are suggested to accommodate the reality of the connection between cultural heritage, conflict, and power and to avoid the occurrence of “fractured resemblances” of heritage shared across state lines.

Responding to J. H. Merryman's discussion of cultural property internationalism in the preceding IJCP issue, this article examines the currency of the internationalist perspective within the museum community. Perhaps surprisingly, there is little evidence of adherence to an internationalist perspective, at least among the official policies and publications of museums and museum organizations. The article proposes that the current dissociation with cultural internationalism in the acquisitions arena signals an important shift, and bears significant long-term consequences for many museums.

According to the Syrian philosopher T. Tizini (1934–2019), the dilemma of authenticity heritage in the Arab world has lost its factual conceptualization. While its societal and ideological issues have been rightly discussed, its technical aspects have been handled only superficially. In this article, I review the deep interconnectivities between the societal and technical aspects of the term “authenticity” and the reconstruction of the damaged architectural heritage in Syria after years of a devastating war. I suggest that any postwar reconstruction raises a central contradiction: rebuilding an element from the past in the present. While the destroyed physical fabrics might be reconstituted, the setting that gave them value and meaning can never be reestablished. For that reason, preserving the “authenticity” in the wide significance of the term seems unrealistic in the context of reconstructed heritage. Nevertheless, what several Syrian scholars and politicians describe as “authenticity by creativity” might be a possible outcome.

This article explores the history of collecting and dealing in non-Western cultural objects—primarily from the Pacific Islands—from the earliest explorers to the modern auction houses. It considers international and domestic laws relating to indigenous cultural material that might be seen as religious or sacred in character and concludes that while these rules clearly influence both private and institutional practices they fall short of legally impacting the functioning of otherwise lawful markets.