Cultural heritage is a crucial component that plays a fundamental role in defining an individual’s identity and advancing the protection of his or her human rights. Reinforcing cultural distinctions and human differences are significant and therefore recognized in Islam. This article enhances the understanding of an Islamic approach to cultural heritage and human rights through the lens offered by three examples: the right to education, freedom of religion, and the right to development. The discussion of the protection of cultural heritage in Islam is essential because Islam is one of the legal sources in many Muslim states, and, therefore, the examination of its intersection with international law could enhance the protection of cultural heritage and promote human rights in the Islamic world. The article develops principles of cultural heritage protection that are in conformity with international law. These principles are the promising common ground for the possibility of universal cultural heritage policy. Despite the fact that there is no clear reference to the notion of cultural heritage in Islamic teaching, this article shows that principles of the protection of cultural heritage are established.

Most private international laws do not address cultural property specifically but, instead, apply the general lex rei sitae rule also to artifacts. Legal scholarship has revealed the flaws of the rigid application of the lex rei sitae principle to cultural goods and has proposed alternative connecting factors, such as the lex originis principle, to prevent forum and law shopping in this field. Reacting to the criticisms, some of the more recent private international law codifications have decided on the adoption of specific rules on stolen and illegally exported cultural goods that combine the lex rei sitae and the lex originis rules and provide room for the parties’ autonomy. This article draws the conclusion that these more recent legislative solutions do not necessarily promote legal certainty and predictability with regard to the governing law and are far from being a Holy Grail for the conflict of laws of cultural property, whether on a national level or within the European Union.

Cultural restitution in international law typically aims to restore cultural property to the state of origin. The experience of World War II raised the question of how to adapt this framework to deal with states that persecuted cultural groups within their own borders. Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews and its attempt to destroy their cultural heritage began before the war and was carried out systematically throughout the war in the conquered territories. After the war, the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin advocated for the recognition of the new crime of genocide and, in particular, its cultural dimensions. Jewish organizations also argued that cultural destruction should be seen as an integral component of the crime of genocide and that the remedy of cultural restitution should be part of the effort to rehabilitate the injured group, but their efforts to gain recognition in the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg for the unique harm suffered by the Jews were unsuccessful. This article discusses an innovative approach developed by Jewish jurists and scholars in the late 1940s and 1950s, according to which heirless cultural property was returned to Jewish organizations as trustees for the Jewish people. Though largely forgotten in the annals of law, this approach offers a promising model for international law to overcome its statist bias and recognize the critical importance of cultural heritage for the rehabilitation of (non-state) victim groups.

This article unfolds around the controversial case of Georgia’s eleventh-century Bagrati Cathedral, which represents the only site to be removed from the World Heritage List as a result of its full-scale reconstruction. After its destruction in armed conflict by the end of the seventeenth century, the first conservation-restoration works on the monument were carried out in the 1950s. In 1994, partially reconstructed but still without a roof, Bagrati Cathedral had no issues in meeting the conditions of authenticity when the nomination was made for inscription in the World Heritage List. The conflict arose further when the conservation experts did not endorse the state party’s intention to fully rebuild the cathedral, notwithstanding the fact it was stated to be crucial for its functional continuity. The International Council on Monuments and Sites and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization took the view that this scale intervention would compromise the cathedral’s outstanding universal value and authenticity. This article offers a closer look at the decision-making process, from the nomination to the delisting of Bagrati Cathedral, and analyzes the factors contributing to the conflicting interpretations of the monument’s fundamental values among stakeholders. It addresses the issues from a broader perspective to include the historical-cultural background of Georgia and local approaches to preserving the religious sites, which tend to be overlooked in the discourse.

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.

Nowadays, the antiquities-smuggling phenomenon seems more complicated than many researchers thought before. Antiquity looting is delinquent behaviour and a criminal activity. Hence, it is closely connected to many of the other problems that Greece is currently facing. This article tries to set the smuggling problem in a wider frame. More specifically, many researchers have pointed to the long-term inability of Greece’s tax services to detect income hiding. This has led to increased tax evasion and a shadow economic phenomenon. Moreover, researchers and institutions have made the conclusion that self-employed persons / freelancers in Greece have an increased capability for income hiding, irrespective of the origin of the money. A thorough examination of the occupations of 497 arrested people in Greece revealed that, indeed, the majority of them fall in the self-employed/freelance category. The results of this article are based on the 291 official arrests that took place from 1999 to 2015.