CALL FOR PAPERS: First All Art and Cultural Heritage Law Conference

The University of Geneva, in partnership with UNESCO, is holding an international conference on 13 and 14 June 2014.

The conference, ‘convening all those engaged in research and teaching in the field of Art and Cultural Heritage Law’, includes a session chaired by Simon Mackenzie. The session is titled ‘Beyond the Law: Fighting Illicit Traffic in the Field’, welcoming papers on the following themes:

1. Implementation of international law: How are international conventions aiming to the prevention of illicit trafficking of cultural property and ratified by the individual States effectively implemented in the field? How can compliance be improved? How can breaches be efficiently sanctioned? To what extent does the nature of national legislations on cultural property influence the cooperation between States (for instance, while negotiating bilateral agreements or simply for the recognition of such legislations at a foreign court)?
2. Impact of economic factors: How can economic incentives be developed in order to undermine illicit trafficking? To what extent does tourism endanger or enhance the protection of cultural heritage sites?
3. The “human” factor: How are the improvements made by the law applied by state officials or professionals in the field (for example during custom controls)? What individual leeway should States benefit from in emergency situations, such as disaster or conflict, to prevent the looting?

Deadline for initial abstracts to this and the other sessions is 1 March 2014. Abstracts can be sent to the University of Geneva’s Art-Law Centre email address: art-droit@unige.ch. 

Click here for more information on the Geneva Conference June 2014