Moving beyond R2P: Protecting Heritage and Humans

Shortly after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or sometimes ISIS or Da’esh) took the city of Palmyra in summer 2015, they exploded the 2,000-year-old Temple of Baalshamin. For international audiences, the destruction was linked to the group’s ongoing murder, human trafficking, slavery, and terror in Syria and Iraq. Mass atrocities also accompanied the destruction of cultural heritage when insurgents deliberately shelled the Mostar Bridge in 1993, destroyed the fabled mosques, mausoleums, and libraries of Timbuktu in 2012, as well as when the Taliban dynamited the fifth-century Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001.

Can anything be done? An affirmative response is suggested by the history of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), a remarkable human rights achievement despite its contested application and nonapplication—e.g., in Libya but not in Syria and Myanmar.1ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001); and Thomas G. Weiss and Don Hubert, eds., The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, Background (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001). Truth in packaging: the author was the ICISS research director; see Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016). The resulting responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine rests on ethical, political, legal, and operational foundations. Heightened attention in academic and public discourse to the demands of coming to the rescue of people now also characterizes the challenge of protecting cultural heritage, which intersects with mass atrocities.2→Thomas G. Weiss and Nina Connelly, “Cultural Cleansing and Mass Atrocities: Protecting Heritage in Armed Conflicts,” J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy,” no. 1 (2017).
→James Cuno and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., “Cultural Heritage under Siege: Laying the Foundation for a Legal and Political Framework to Protect Cultural Heritage at Risk in Zones of Armed Conflict,” J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy no. 4 (2020).

In fact, the intimate link between attacking bricks and blood provides a means to unite the tasks of protecting heritage and humans because the international political disputes about when and where to intervene in specific crises to protect people do not characterize the protection of cultural heritage. The rogue attackers—such nonstate thugs as ISIS, pariah states as Taliban Afghanistan, and even major powers as China—are immediate targets for widespread external opprobrium. Universal international condemnation erupts rather than endless debates about whether outside interveners are neo-colonialists or cosmopolitans.

Could reframing intervention to protect heritage make it easier to reach a consensus about robust international action that also would protect the people whose culture is under siege? That question is the starting point for a J. Paul Getty Trust research project and a 2022 edited volume, Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities.3James Cuno and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities (forthcoming 2022). The destruction of cultural heritage amidst violence and atrocities is a continuing plague—Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Soviet pogroms, and Pol Pot’s killing fields provided the twentieth century’s worst images, which have continued into the post-Cold War era with new manifestations of death, displacement, and cultural wastelands.

A bit of good news, however. Because of the public’s awareness and shock about the destruction of such visible sites as the Bamiyan Buddhas, Mostar Bridge, Palmyra, Sana’a, and Timbuktu, nearly universal international revulsion and outrage erupted in January 2020 when Donald Trump mindlessly threatened to target 52 Iranian cultural sites when Tehran menaced retaliation for the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.

Protecting heritage has become visible on the international public policy agenda. It is no longer a “niche topic,” the exclusive domain of cultural specialists. It is linked to the rescue of individuals caught in the crosshairs of violence, invariably menaced by mass atrocities. It is essential, moreover, to consider not only visible World Heritage sites recognized by the UN Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) but also less well-known, everyday immovable structures—Uyghur mud-brick temples in China, Christian village cemeteries in Iraq, or local Rohingya mosques in Myanmar. These commonplace sites have become a daily bill-of-fare of destruction, and their destruction too is indicative of the widespread onslaught against the people whose heritage they represent, as part of efforts to eliminate histories along with human beings.

Beyond R2P

Can anything be done to counter the immoral, illegal, wanton attacks on heritage? Progress is possible on the normative and policy fronts to attenuate the deliberate destruction of sites—what former UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova called “cultural cleansing.”4She first used the term in December 2014 in UNESCO, Heritage and Cultural Diversity at Risk in Iraq and Syria (Paris: UNESCO, 2014).

While some observers see competition between bricks and blood,5Helen Frowe and Derek Matravers, “Conflict and Cultural Heritage: A Moral Analysis of the Challenges of Heritage Protection,” J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy no. 3 (2019). 6Quoted in Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War, 2nd ed. (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), 15. the two are intertwined—indeed, inseparable. While specialists try to parse atrocities versus heritage, most publics see the images and read analyses of heritage destruction accompanied by mass murder, forced displacement, rape, ethnic cleansing, sterilization, human trafficking, slavery, and terrorism. They almost always occur in tandem. As Raphael Lemkin noted, “Burning books is not the same as burning bodies. . . but when one intervenes. . . against mass destruction of churches and books one arrives just in time to prevent the burning of bodies.”7Quoted in Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War, 2nd ed. (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), 15.

While governments and citizens loudly deplore such devastation, they do little about it; indeed, they have other domestic and foreign policy priorities and see little that they can do. Yet, modest collective steps could be a plausible part of a “shift from defending and preserving multilateralism to strengthening and renewing it.”8Richard Ponzio et al., Beyond UN75: A Roadmap for Inclusive, Networked & Effective Global Governance (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2021), 9.

Resignation and throwing up diplomatic hands in despair along with the weeping and gnashing of humanitarian teeth initially characterized fledgling efforts to conceptualize action against those who murdered and abused civilians in the violent clashes of the 1990s. That is, until humanitarian interventions were followed by the ICISS’s 2001 report, The Responsibility to Protect. Cochair Gareth Evans calculated the norm’s progress to date as “a blink of the eye in the history of ideas.”9Gareth Evans, The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2009), 28. R2P has advanced from the passionate prose of an eminent group toward being a mainstay of international public policy debates, even if actions remain inconsistent. Edward Luck, the first special advisor to the UN Secretary-General on R2P, reminded us that the lifespan of successful norms is “measured in centuries, not decades.”10Edward C. Luck, “The Responsibility to Protect: The First Decade,” Global Responsibility to Protect 3, no. 4 (2011): 387. R2P is embedded in the values of international society and occasionally in specific policies and responses to mass atrocities.

Linking the protection of people and their heritage, a journalist working at the interface, Hugh Eakin, noted: “While the United Nations has adopted the ‘responsibility to protect’ [R2P] doctrine, to allow for international intervention to stop imminent crimes of war or genocide, no such parallel principle has been introduced for cultural heritage.”11Hugh Eakin, “Use Force to Stop ISIS’ Destruction of Art and History,” New York Times, April 3, 2015. Yet, we do not need another principle because of the intimate link between protecting heritage and vulnerable populations. Attacks on culture invariably accompany genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing—the mass atrocities that the 2005 World Summit agreed should trigger an R2P response.12UN, 2005 World Summit Outcome, General Assembly resolution 60/1, 24 October 2005, paragraphs 138–140.

The most obvious costs associated with the attacks on cultural heritage and the people sustained by it are borne directly by vulnerable populations. They can be measured in loss of lives and livelihoods, reduced longevity, infant stunting—and the list goes on. In terms of cultural heritage, the destruction of tangible and intangible heritage sounds an alarm bell for a forthcoming genocide or ethnic cleansing—targeted destruction of cultural heritage, as experienced during Kristallnacht in 1938, has occurred regularly. Curators and archivists, recognizing the warning signals, have died while attempting to save heritage in the face of early violent attacks.

There are two reasons behind R2P’s analytical, ethical, and operational pertinence for cultural heritage. The first is the logic of ICISS’s original three-part framework.13This framework is different from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s three pillars. For more on the three pillars, see Ban Ki-moon, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect, Report of the Secretary-General, UN document A/63/677, 12 January 2009. Cultural specialists apply the same three concepts—to prevent, to react, and to rebuild—to protect cultural heritage. There is an imperative to prevent destruction but when that fails, it is necessary to react; when both of those fail, as is too often the case, it is essential to rebuild. The second reason is that the major constraint facing international action to protect heritage often is the same as vulnerable civilians: state sovereignty.

While normative advances do not guarantee action, they are an essential prerequisite for moving beyond ad hoc, inconsistent, local, and short-term responses toward more systematic, global, rules-based, predictable, and coordinated ones. R2P’s normative journey is pertinent because it reflected an altered political reality: Suddenly, it was no longer taboo to discuss how best to halt mass atrocities. State sovereignty was not sacrosanct but conditional on a modicum of respect for life. Although when and where to invoke R2P remains contested, few commentators suggest that it is completely flawed for organizing global conversations and responses to mass atrocities. Instead, discourse now revolves around the norm, less about whether and more about how. Robust action does not necessarily follow, but the language and logic are different. R2P occupies a prominent spot in mainstream policy debates. For instance, the UN Security Council has invoked it in over 90 resolutions and the Human Rights Council in over 50 resolutions. The UN General Assembly’s consideration in May 2021 was indicative: 115 for and 15 against (28 abstentions).14For up-to-date tallies, see the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.

Efforts to protect immovable cultural heritage amidst mass atrocities are at the beginning of a comparable normative itinerary. In the best case, it could elicit enhanced international attention, growing consensus, and more vigorous policies in a changing political landscape; perhaps action could occasionally follow as well. Similarities exist between today’s political environment for protecting cultural heritage and the 1990s when states were searching for a rationale after doing too little too late in Rwanda and, some said, too much too soon in Kosovo. In short, the destruction of immovable cultural heritage amidst state and nonstate atrocities is not new, but today’s better-informed politics may be propitious for normative and policy advances.

It is useful to recall that the responsibility to react includes sanctions, international criminal pursuit, and military intervention. Less intrusive approaches should be pursued before more intrusive options. Hence, military force should be deployed in rare cases of profound humanitarian distress and, by extension, serious attacks on immovable cultural heritage—for itself and as a precursor for the mass atrocities that often follow. As indicated, in 2005 UN member states enumerated four triggers: “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.” As with just war theory, precautionary R2P principles (right intention, last resort, proportional means, and reasonable prospects) should also govern international reactions to the destruction of cultural heritage.

The link between protecting people and their cultures is intimate, whether one stresses the intrinsic or extrinsic value of immovable heritage. Cosmopolitans emphasize the former as humanity benefits from all specific manifestations of culture and suffers from their disappearance. Humanitarians emphasize the extrinsic value because those who commit mass atrocities understand that the annihilation of heritage is a prelude to or an integral part of targeting people. Protecting people and culture are inseparable tasks. Moreover, there is no need for any hierarchy; the choice between bricks and blood is false, as is a choice between people and their environment. Air, water, and culture are essential for life.

Politics, not law, is the problem

Compared to the law, politics provides a clearer lens through which to examine cultural heritage, where public international law is very developed. Bokova’s “cultural cleansing” resonates because, like “ethnic cleansing,” it is not a legal construct, but both have political traction.

Nonetheless, the conventions deposited at UNESCO have garnered a large number of states parties.15Among these are the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict; the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property; and the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Their common feature is the “value” or “importance” of heritage as the criterion to determine the status as cultural “property” or “heritage.” The latter term is preferred because it stresses stewardship and trusteeship, not the accidents of current ownership. The shared human value of immovable and movable cultural heritage is not limited to those who have inherited it directly or indirectly, those living within the contemporary boundaries of states.

It is worth parsing the politics behind the decision not to include the protection of heritage in arguably the strictest of international laws, the 1948 Genocide Convention. What if Lemkin’s inclusion of vandalism had not been omitted from the 1948 Genocide Convention that he had helped to draft? Would cultural heritage have fared better in the ongoing tragedies in Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, and Xinjiang as well as earlier in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, the Balkans, and Mali?

Scholars have paid only fleeting attention to this emphasis in Lemkin’s work—the relevance of biological and cultural genocide.16Raphael Lemkin, “Acts Constituting a General (Transnational) Danger Considered as Offences Against the Law of Nations,” (1933); and Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, and Proposals for Redress (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1944), xiii. The negotiators of the 1948 Convention eliminated the latter. The politics of that time were a converse of today’s: the reluctance about R2P in parts of the Global South versus the more enthusiastic support of the Global North.17Edward C. Luck, “Cultural Genocide and the Protection of Cultural Heritage,” J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy no. 2 (2018), 23–27. The opposition to “vandalism” in the convention came from colonial powers (Belgium, Denmark, France, Netherlands, and United Kingdom) and settler countries (the United States, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand) fearing condemnation for their crimes against Indigenous populations. Ironically, enthusiasm for the inclusion of cultural genocide came from independent developing countries and colonies about to become independent, some of which now label R2P as a Trojan Horse for Western imperialism.

So, human rights and R2P advocates should elevate not downgrade the destruction of immovable cultural heritage, because it reliably foreshadows mass atrocities and, almost invariably, accompanies them. We need to understand the range of conscience-shocking perpetrators, crimes, and incentives characterizing the interconnections between attacks on cultural heritage and on people, from bombings by nonstate actors to military strikes by internationally recognized governments.

Conclusion

The core R2P ethical framework is to halt mass murder and mass forced displacement. Its emergence reflected an altered political reality. Although specific decisions about when and where to invoke R2P remain controversial, few observers question whether global responses to mass atrocities are justified. Instead, the debate centers on how best to achieve R2P’s lofty aims.

The protection of immovable cultural heritage is not a distraction for proponents of the robust protection of people because of the intersection between violent attacks on humans and heritage. There is no need to add another crime to the four mass atrocities agreed by the 2005 World Summit. Rather, protecting cultural heritage is a fundamental aspect of protecting people from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. In addition, emphasizing such protection within the R2P framework has the potential to widen support for the evolving norm and its evolution in customary law as well as contribute to ongoing conversations about legitimate sovereigns. Responsible states view mass atrocities as an international concern and not merely one of domestic jurisdiction; the destruction of immovable cultural heritage should be viewed similarly because of their universal value and the intimate links between attacks on cultural objects, structures, and monuments and attacks on vulnerable populations.

While destroying cultural heritage is not new, neither is the impulse to protect and preserve it; the contemporary convergence of two factors has altered the politics of protection and the feasibility of international action. The first is that the destruction of cultural heritage has riveted the attention not only of curators, archaeologists, historians, and activists but also of major media outlets and popular audiences. Moreover, these new consumers find themselves in the company of a cottage industry of social scientists exploring R2P’s application.

It is worth repeating the necessity to avoid splitting hairs between safeguarding people and the cultural heritage that sustains them. The staffs from the Middle East Institute, the Asia Society, and the Antiquities Coalition evaluated the region’s devastation and concluded: “The fight to protect the peoples of the region and their heritage cannot be separated.”