Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Act 2017

Policy background

2. The Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Act introduces the necessary domestic legislation to enable the United Kingdom to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (The Convention) and accede to its two Protocols (1954 and 1999).
3. The Hague Convention, adopted following the massive destruction of cultural property that took place in the Second World War, provides for a system of general and special protection of cultural property in situations of armed conflict. Parties to the Convention are required to respect both cultural property situated within their own territory and cultural property within the territory of other Parties, by refraining from using it, or its immediate surrounding, for purposes which are likely to expose it to destruction or damage in the event of armed conflict, and by refraining from committing any hostile act against the property. The Convention also restricts use of a distinctive emblem (which can only be used as provided by the Convention in connection with the protection of cultural property). Amongst other matters the Convention also deals with the transport of cultural property under special protection (including immunity from seizure).
4. The Convention was followed by two Protocols. The first in 1954 (the ‘First Protocol’) imposes a number of obligations on Parties in relation to the protection of cultural property in occupied territories. Parties must undertake to prevent the export of cultural property from any territory occupied by it during an armed conflict and to take into its custody any cultural property protected under the Convention and imported into its territory either directly or indirectly from any occupied territory. At the end of the occupation, each Party is obliged to return any cultural property in its territory that was exported from the occupied State and refrain from retaining it as war reparations.
5. The United Kingdom originally chose not to ratify the Convention or to accede to the First Protocol, not on the grounds that it opposed measures to protect cultural property in the event of armed conflict, but rather because it considered, together with a number of other countries, that the Convention and First Protocol did not provide an effective regime for the protection of cultural property.
6. The Second Protocol, agreed in 1999, extends and clarifies the obligations under the Convention. In particular it identifies five acts, each a serious violation of the Protocol, which are to be considered an offence under the Protocol. It also establishes an enhanced system of protection for specially designated cultural property.
7. The Second Protocol removed many of the United Kingdom’s concerns and in doing so allowed the Government of the time to announce its intention to ratify the Convention and its two Protocols in May 2004. This resulted in the publication of the draft Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill in 2008. The Draft Bill was welcomed by the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which found it to be strongly supported on the basis of the evidence it received. In substance the policy behind the Act remained the same since 2008 although minor changes were made to update and improve the drafting.
8. As of February 2017, 128 countries are party to the Hague Convention, 105 countries are party to its First Protocol and 71 countries are party to its Second Protocol.