The meeting of experts in Warsaw is one of the activities marking the 20th anniversary of the Memory of the World (MoW) program. The events started on 1 April and were held throughout 2012, including a MoW Exhibition at the UNESCO headquarters that focused on items that are listed on MoW Register (national, regional, and international) and an international conference held 26–28 September 2012 in Vancouver, Canada, on Memory of the World in the Digital Age: Digitization and Preservation. The challenges and solutions relating to the impact of the technological advances for the preservation and accessibility of the documentary heritage have occupied the attention of UNESCO for some time, culminating in the adoption of the Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage by the 32nd session of the General Conference of UNESCO on 17 October 2003.

Concepts of memory—specifically notions of collective memory—are associated in heritage studies with the central idea of authenticity. In this article I review what is relevant in the psychology of memory to these discourses, and reflect on this association of collective memory and authenticity in heritage studies, notably in the 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity. Concepts of time are central to this review. The idea of world heritage is, it is suggested, a future-oriented ideal for a common humanity. The metaphorical underpinnings of our vernacular uses of time-concepts, such as past and future, are examined. Psychological considerations of memory as retrieval or reconstruction are then outlined. The distinction between kinds of memory, notably episodic and semantic memory, is then presented. These, it is argued, are building blocks for collective memory, which, in turn, is the seedbed for the underemphasized but potent idea of collective imagination. If the primary function of memory is actually oriented to the future, then imagination is what puts kinds of memory to work in both predicting and creating the future. Our ability to imagine—to mentally project forward—is heavily dependent on what we know—that is, on semantic memory. The article concludes with some reflections on the policy implications of this analysis for the visitor to world heritage sites.

In this transcript of an extended interview, Dame Siobhan Davies discusses her biography and oeuvre in the context of an enquiry into aspects of learning, transmission, and claims to ownership over the material that makes modern dance. The creative practice of contemporary dance makers offers an opportunity to describe the “coming into being” of both knowledge and persons in a unique domain, but one also connected to other areas of the arts and collaborative practice. Davies describes an approach to making dance that explicitly rejects two key notions: that the body merely performs what the mind creates and, thus, that the choreographer and the dancer are in a hierarchical relationship of control mirroring the control of mind over matter. She then describes how her creative processes with others have been increasingly shaped to allow non-proprietorial and non-hierarchical outcomes that are substantive to the art works themselves.

Protocols in international law seem to be proliferating. Examples of official protocols at international law abound, from the 1967 Stockholm Protocol Regarding Developing Countries (amending the Berne Convention on copyright), to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change, to the recent Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing in 2010. But what exactly is a “protocol” compared to other international legal instruments, such as declarations and treaties? And why does there seem to be a flurry of new protocols today, in domains as vast as intellectual property and indigenous people's rights? On 19 August a new “working group” convened at the New York University School of Law to begin to study protocols, especially with an eye toward their use as a tool to protect indigenous cultural property—hence, the term “cultural protocols.” The working group is the brainchild of Dr. Jane Anderson of the University of Massachusetts and Professor Barton Beebe of the New York University School of Law.

The author lays a blueprint for distinctions between legal and moral rules and socially accepted behavior, situations in which these distinctions set different standards of conduct, and the relationship among them. Several of the more common paradigms of cultural property disputes are then fit into the patterns of legal and moral rules and obligations, thus establishing a framework for the discussion of how to evaluate ethical or moral behaviors in varying circumstances. The author also considers the relevance of deontological and consequentialist arguments for the return of cultural property, as well as avoidance strategies by which a country of origin can make a claim for restitution while ignoring the long-term questions of the legitimacy, power, and responsibilities of national governments. The author concludes by emphasizing the difficulties in basing arguments concerning cultural property on moral evaluations and conclusions.

The author sets out an assumption—that the law in the area of cultural heritage is unsettled. He uses this faulty assumption as a basis for criticizing the use of and reference to legal rules within the cultural heritage field. In his introduction Audi states that he will apply a “theoretical apparatus” derived from “legal reasoning as it relates to gaps, ambiguities, or conflicts in laws” but admits that this methodology is less appropriate for settled areas of the law. At this point he unwittingly undermines the premise of his article. He goes even further in attributing “more than a little bad faith behind lawyers and judges” who claim to be applying the law. He seems to confuse policy arguments, where admittedly commentators can offer conflicting views that seem to carry equal validity, with legal arguments. He also believes that the legal arguments cancel each other out as if a decision from a court or a statute that congress passes is on a par with arguments offered by those who favor or disapprove of the result.

Mamilla cemetery was one of the largest and most important Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem. The plans to build a “Museum of Tolerance” in it led to heated protests and a prolonged legal procedure in Israel’s Supreme Court of Justice. In 2008, the court approved the plans and many hundreds of graves were exhumed. Through the available sources, including the court’s archival files, we discuss political, legal, and archaeological aspects of this case, focusing on ethics about cemeteries and descendant communities. The discussion shows that the Israel Antiquities Authority breached the court orders and that the treatment of the archaeological remains was biased. “Their” graves were destroyed, and the bones reburied in secret, while “our” remains in the same areas were carefully excavated and preserved. Tolerance to “our” heritage at the expense of “theirs” is intolerance.

Drawing on the contributions to this special issue, this article offers a synthetic description of the principles of ownership, sharing, and reward that guide and stimulate the creative practices of contemporary dance. Irish traditional music is also considered. The article aims to contextualize creative practices within a series of concerns around the protection and perpetuation of valuable cultural and artistic practices. This contextualization establishes the relevance and interest of the contemporary dance for other domains and attends to the contemporary conditions of cultural production, including those of intellectual property law, commercialization, and community/commons formation. I show how this work offers an illuminating model of social process in which value created in common is linked – through reputation, attribution, recognition, and innovation – to people, without private property becoming the dominant mode of ownership.

Even though places of worship are protected by the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, they often become targets. To safeguard the cultural property of religious communities, it is necessary to plan for wartime protection under peaceful conditions, but studies of how this planning was conducted after 1945 are largely missing. This Article compares how the cultural property of the Church of Sweden (Lutheran) has been planned for protection up until 2023. Cultural property protection was first introduced in World War II, but the Church had to plan and carry out most protective measures without state support. During the Cold War, a system for protecting movable property was developed that lasted until it was replaced in the 1980s by cultural protection plans that employed a more holistic approach to risk mitigation in peace as well as in war. Finally, the recent development and future challenges are discussed in relation to the 1954 Hague Convention and the reconstruction of a Swedish total defense due to the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Fifty years after the ratification of the World Heritage Convention, we have come to learn that there is a huge discrepancy between the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) ideals of protecting heritage sites with outstanding universal values and unmatched realities in situ. I attempt to elucidate what World Heritage ideals of heritage protection are held in iconic sites in Southeast Asia. The studied sites are ancient monumental heritage sites of national importance – namely, Borobudur of Indonesia, Sukhothai and Ayutthaya of Thailand, and Angkor of Cambodia. The authorities in these countries have converted heritage sites into parks for visitors and for capitalization, which has placed authenticity and integrity at stake as well as converting the sites for contestation between the authorities and local communities. In order to solve the dilemma of the World Heritage ideals and their unwanted realities, I explore possible effective approaches for UNESCO and its partners to take into consideration.

This article examines the relationship between the World Heritage Convention and international human rights law. The first part of the article draws on key phrases in Article 1 of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Constitution, which defines its purpose to elaborate on the role of human rights to UNESCO’s mandate and how developments in international human rights law over the last 75 years have been translated into the organization’s policies and programs and the implementation of the World Heritage Convention. The second part details how human rights violations related to World Heritage properties expose significant shortcomings in UNESCO’s fulfillment of its mandate and states’ compliance with international human rights norms. The third part outlines the international responsibility of various actors in respect of serious violations of human rights related to World Heritage properties. The final part identifies possible areas of reform in the operation of the World Heritage Convention that may facilitate its alignment with international human rights law and UNESCO’s adherence to its mandate.

In March 2013, the Barbier-Mueller collection of pre-Columbian art was auctioned at Sotheby’s Paris. This event ended with the sale of half of the works offered and generated a confrontation between six of the countries of origin of the artifacts, which were absolutely opposed to the sale, and the Sothebys’ Parisian branch. This article, taking the case described above as a reference, intends to analyze the ethical considerations and lawfulness implied in the buying and selling of cultural property at auction. With this purpose in mind, the arguments held by both parties in this disagreement are analyzed. At the same time, the efficacy of national laws, international conventions, and regulations is considered, mainly with reference to the use of principles and ethical codes that seem to be applied when the law has no jurisdiction.