Today’s war, tomorrow’s loot: attempts at stemming the illicit trade in art

The Art Newspaper reviews international efforts to curb the wartime looting and illicit trade of movable cultural property, focusing on legal tools and their limits. It highlights the 1954 Hague Convention and its protocol, signed by around 110 countries, which requires states to prevent theft and pillage during armed conflict, prohibits export from occupied territories, and obliges seizure and repatriation of unlawfully exported objects after hostilities. The article notes that many market countries (including the UK, France, and the Netherlands) have laws restricting imports from war zones, while the US has not signed the protocol but has cultural property laws that can offer some protection. It also points to UN Security Council restrictions for cultural property from Iraq and Syria, contrasting the lack of similar consensus for Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, and Iran, and discusses how looted objects often surface years later on “grey” markets; it adds that EU Regulation 2019/880 creates checkpoints and a general prohibition on importing unlawfully removed cultural goods into the EU.

Read the full article at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events