Ricerc@Sapienza

The widespread dissemination of videos of terrorists destroying monuments of world cultural heritage in the last twenty years, such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan and the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, has shocked all of humanity. Such hateful conduct is perhaps the clearest – though the most striking - example of what we mean by the term and acronym IDCHH. For the purposes of our analysis, the expression “cultural heritage of humankind” includes only tangible, movable and immovable cultural artefacts and sites, while intangible cultural heritage is not included.

As described in its self-explanatory title, the research is about the remedies envisaged by international law to respond to IDCHH. It focuses on the tools available under international law to provide redress for the material and moral injuries caused by IDCHH. In short, the project is about a dissertation on the international responsibility arising from IDCHH.

At first glance, this topic may seem like a niche issue, one of those arguments that are discussed only by a limited number of international lawyers with very specific expertise in the field of cultural heritage protection. Instead, and this is the interesting thing, IDCHH is an act (of course, a heinous act) that has so many facets from an international law perspective that a single manuscript will probably not be sufficient to comprehensively examine the topic. The same is true of the reverse, albeit complementary, side of the inquiry that is the proper topic of the research under consideration here, namely, the identification and analysis of the remedies and instruments provided in international law for reparation and redress for IDCHH.