Application of the Hague Convention

Legislation first: States punish the looting, destruction and theft of cultural property, and transpose the Second Protocol. Inventories next: without a list of property to protect, no concrete protection is possible. Training, because soldiers must know how to recognise the emblem and what it requires.

Finally cooperation: the exchange of information between States, with UNESCO and with OIMAP speeds up the return of recovered property and the prosecution of traffickers.

OIMAP supports States: it makes available a model law, training modules and the BIOP database for sharing reports. It publishes each year a monitoring report comparing the progress of Member States.

It also encourages market operators to build the Convention into their due diligence procedures: consulting the list of endangered property, refusing provenances from conflict zones without proof of long-standing possession.

States that have suffered a recent conflict testify to a common lesson: digital inventories and cooperation agreements signed before the crisis are the most effective tools. Several of them were able to recover works thanks to inventory photographs supplied by their museums.

In 2024 OIMAP organised a workshop bringing together twelve States to share these lessons. Its conclusions have been built into the good practices recommended to States.