Where people are killed and abused in warfare and violent conflict, artifacts of cultural heritage are often destroyed and mistreated as well. Indeed, in the World War II-era efforts to promote the then-novel idea of genocide, the Polish lawyer and activist Raphael Lemkin sought to codify the notion that genocide was both personal and cultural. What has come of his efforts?  

In this episode of International Horizons, we are joined by Irina Bokova, former Director-General of UNESCO and former Bulgarian ambassador to France and Monaco, who discusses the reasons why cultural heritage should be defended and preserved. Bokova provides different examples of how terrorist groups have destroyed ancient cultural heritage, the evolution of the legal frameworks to protect it, and how — despite the disregard for international law these days — the protection of cultural heritage is evolving.

John Torpey  00:14

Where people are killed and abused in warfare and violent conflict, artifacts of cultural heritage are often destroyed and mistreated as well. Indeed, in the World War II era efforts to promote the then novel idea of genocide, the Polish lawyer and activist Raphael Lemkin sought to codify the notion that genocide was both personal and cultural. What has come of his efforts?  

John Torpey  00:39

Welcome to International Horizons, a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues. My name is John Torpey, and I’m director of the Ralph Bunche Institute at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  

John Torpey  00:58

We are fortunate to have with us today Irina Bokova, formerly the Director-General of UNESCO – the United Nations Education, Social, and Cultural Organization. She is a former parliamentarian in Bulgaria and former interim foreign minister of Bulgaria. She has also served as Bulgaria’s ambassador to both France and Monaco. She wrote the Foreword to Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities, the recent volume by James Cuno, formerly head of the Getty Museum, and Tom Weiss, my predecessor as Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute. Thanks for being with us today, Irina Bokova.

Irina Bokova  01:35

Thank you very much, Professor Torpey, for inviting me to participate in this debate. I’m extremely happy to continue what James Cuno and Tom Weiss have started with this publication. And I would say that it is so important to continue nowadays, because we see what is happening in the world with the war in Ukraine [and] with conflict. And we should not think that heritage and culture [are] just collateral damage in a war. But it should be an essential part of our response to crisis [and] conflict, and to appreciate more its role for peacebuilding and for security.

John Torpey  02:22

Absolutely. So you’ve just written as I said, the foreword to this book, Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities which has come out from the Getty Museum, and was put together and edited by James Cuno of the Getty Museum and Tom Weiss. And it’s about the relationship between these two phenomena, cultural heritage and mass atrocities. But perhaps we could start by clarifying what exactly cultural heritage means, and why it’s a matter of contestation. So why do insurgents and other violent actors, what do they get out of destroying cultural heritage?

Irina Bokova  03:01

Well, I think that currently we have a better understanding of what heritage is and how it affects all of us, to what extent it is closely linked with our identities. I have always thought that heritage protection, and everything that the legal framework is doing for heritage, is not just about the past. Definitely, it’s about what kind of past story we want to bring to the present. But it’s also about the future of what kind of societies we want to have. And strictly thinking, heritage of course is about beautiful architectural work, it’s about monumental sculptures, it’s about historic cities, buildings. It’s about the work of men and women of course, and of nature. But it is also the intangible heritage; we should not forget that there is the other side of the living experience and traditions that we also build, [that] we bring from one generation to the other. And the third pillar of heritage protection is our documentary heritage.

Irina Bokova  04:08

So these three pillars are very well, I would say, codified and managed within UNESCO — the expert community — and nowadays, we see that whenever a heritage site is destroyed, we have this notion of a common heritage that was all kind of diminished. And we also feel very connected to that. And I think nowadays in a globalized world, [an] interconnected world, but very fragmented, I would like to say, questions about heritage and identity come really with all its importance, strongly sometimes into the political agenda of governments, international organizations and others.

John Torpey  04:54

Thanks for that. But maybe you could take some examples. A lot of people remember the Bamiyan Buddhas that were destroyed by the Taliban in its first control of Afghanistan in the early part of this century. Can you tell us about that case and maybe some other cases so that people have a clearer idea of what exactly we’re talking about?

Irina Bokova  05:19

Yeah, I think it’s important to show indeed, with some very concrete examples. You’re right that the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban was such an atrocity that kind of woke up to the importance of protecting diversity. The Bamiyan Buddhas were Buddhas for another religion. But also, to the extent that we have to really protect them, to look at what are the risks [and] the dangers. And let me just turn a little bit to attract the attention of the audience to the existence of the legal framework. Actually UNESCO, the United Nations, Organization for Education, Culture, Sciences, and then ‘Communication’ came, was created in order to bring peace to build peace differently. It’s a very interesting history of how it was created. 

Irina Bokova  06:11

The idea came in 1942, during the Second World War, when the Allied Forces were invited to London by the then Minister of Education of the UK, Ellen Wilkinson, and tried to mobilize the intellectual community of the world to see how really education and culture –and further on sciences– can create such a platform for cooperation international that finally brings peace. Actually, in the UNESCO constitution it’s written that if a war starts in the minds of men, it’s in the minds of men that the defenses of peace should be built. And gradually this type of cultural cooperation, which builds, I would say, also strongly on some of the confrontations of the League of Nations – although the League of Nations at that time failed in preventing the Second World War–  they were intellectuals that were already talking about the role of culture in peace.

Irina Bokova  06:14

And when UNESCO was created the first agency within the United Nations in 1945, one of the main activities was indeed to create a legal framework for this. And the first convention definitely was the 1954 Convention prohibiting destruction of institutions of culture and education in a conflict in the world. And this is part of the Hague Humanitarian Conventions. Then gradually, the thinking started to evolve. Countries started to appreciate more historic buildings and others. And there are two landmark events or something that happened indeed, in the 1960s, which brought about the adoption of the 1974 Convention on the Protection of Rural, Cultural and Natural Heritage.

Irina Bokova  08:08

One was the very huge international campaign for the protection of the Abu Simbel temple and statues in Egypt, when the Aswan High Dam was being projected to be created. And there was a whole mobilization of the world with the financing with experts to move these statues on a high level on a plateau, which are there now majestically sitting. And the other, I believe it’s also a strong influence from the US side. It was the great environmentalist, Russell E Train, who created the World Wildlife Fund, which still exists and it is a very important international, non-governmental organization to protect nature. And his strong commitment to the tradition; the US tradition into protecting national parks, he convened a very important conference at the White House with the Nixon presidency, where the idea about this common heritage emerged. So there were different building blocks that brought about the understanding that there is something common in our history of humanity, and this should unite us not divide us. And in order to do that, we should appreciate [and] we should know other cultures, we should respect the monuments sites of the other cultures and we should consider them as ours. So this is the notion about outstanding universal value, which underlines every single description on the World Heritage List.

John Torpey  09:57

I see. So it seems clear that there’s this sense that cultural artifacts, and culture sort of more generally, is part of this idea of genocide. And I guess the question then is what exactly is gained for an insurgent for opposing the government or whatever? Well, what do they get out of destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas or things like that? What’s the advantage?

Irina Bokova  10:29

I think that if we accept this understanding that these sites belong to all of us, we all respect them. As I said, they may pretend to belong to a different religion, to a different civilization to a different period. But they all belong to us. And I’m very proud of UNESCO that it could really build this type of intellectual understanding and solidarity and [build] a common feeling about it. 

Irina Bokova  11:04

And also the other side of it is that we already know that these heritage sites, historic buildings, monuments, and others, are part of our identity. Can you imagine Egypt without the Pharaonic monuments there, or you go to Machu Picchu in Peru and don’t see the majestic buildings and the legacy that has been left from the Incas. And I can continue this long list. And these extremists understood very well that when they destroy these monuments, they hurt all of us, they really create in us a sense of not just outrage, but the sense of missing link with our common history.

Irina Bokova  11:54

And on the other side, I think the other message that they wanted to give us — either with the destruction of Buddhas or in the Middle East with Da’esh when they destroyed Palmyra and some of the other iconic monuments in the Middle East [established] at the early stages of the building the emergence of human civilization there — they wanted to send a message to us that this is not important for them. They deny everything that we have built upon it, that they do not see this, as once again, a common humanity. And they just want to build a desert, where only some kind of exceptional understanding — I wouldn’t say their ideas — will exist. 

Irina Bokova  12:57

By doing this, though, they want to denigrate people, they want to denigrate communities, they want to deprive communities of their history. And I have seen this, because you asked me about examples. I think a very telling example of such a distraction definitely was the case in Mali, where extremists occupied the northern part of the country, including Timbuktu, Kidal and Gao, all very emblematic cities in this part of Africa, which represented the Empire. And Timbuktu was considered some 10 centuries ago as the most flourishing city of Islamic culture of education, there were universities, there were studies of learning.

Irina Bokova  13:49

And until this very day, hundreds of thousands of manuscripts are kept partly in private families. And these manuscripts represent, I would say, one of the best pages of the Islamic thought of philosophy, of medicine, of culture. Some of them transmit the old Greek and Latin knowledge that we know from history. Through this transmission nowadays we know about some of these Greek and Roman knowledge.

Irina Bokova  14:26

And by occupying this and destroying this, and destroying the mausoleums and destroying some of the mosques that exist there, they wanted indeed — and they did — hurt the local communities, which had this not just as a pride, but it was part of their own identity. And I remember visiting with the French president, Francois Holland at that time, [right] after the French troops, with the other African countries, had created the force and pushed away the terrorists and we went to Timbuktu. And we stayed in front of the destroyed mausoleums of their saints, which were venerated for more than 10 generations. And I literally could see the pain in this community. And then when we restored them under the auspices of UNESCO, the local masters, and there of course, in a very special and traditional way, they were inaugurated. I went once again to meet the local community, I wanted to meet the people, and to see what they are feeling after that. I was so emotional. I thought, I’m giving back to these people their own identity. This is what is all about when we speak about heritage.

John Torpey  15:55

So maybe you could talk a little bit about how you’ve described some of the international legal architecture that’s in place to try to stop these things, to punish those who engage in destruction of cultural property. And it’s always a little hard to say exactly when one has had success in preventing something. But maybe you could talk a little bit about what you think is the significance and effectiveness of this international legal architecture.

Irina Bokova  16:24

I think it is important, because international law matters. I think international rules matter. We are living in a world where, unfortunately, many of these rules are questioned, to put it this way. But all this matters. I think what is important, [or] what was important in those days, and which is still very relevant in my mind, it is just to make a link between them with the legal framework, and also the other political security measures with the decisions that are taking in the security sector, sort to say. And this is where putting the close link between humanitarian security and cultural area, sort to say, getting out of the culture box, because this is not just a matter of a few experts or international civil servants on others. But it’s really a metaphor for how you respond to a certain conflict, how you make the peacebuilding, how you organize it.

Irina Bokova  17:32

I do remember when I first started talking after the Malian disaster, that Timbuktu and then Syria and Iraq. And I started talking about the need to protect the heritage. I was even criticized at some time, which was saying that “people are dying and at the same time you’re speaking about a building or speaking about a monument that is there.” And I tried to explain and to convince that you should not make a choice that is so closely linked. This is not just bricks and stones that are there. This is something that is linked to us as humans, this is our human history, our identity. And also that it is a part and parcel of security efforts and peacebuilding and peace efforts then.

 Irina Bokova  18:22

So it was difficult in the beginning, but I think gradually with time [and] with a lot of effort and advocacy and very, I would say, concrete examples in that area, we could convince the political community that they should embrace this also as an important piece of agenda on the table. So the first attempt started with the Security Council when we worked with them. And it started with the financing of terrorism, because the destruction of cultural heritage and the routing of these sites — which at some point took I would say on in industrial scale, we were monitoring this from the satellite pictures there and you could see really see the damage done in the disaster — and financing of terrorism was done not only through drugs and arms, but also through these trafficking.

Irina Bokova  19:24

So the first [step] was the Security Council adopted an important resolution in 2015, where they included against curbing the financing of terrorism some paragraphs on the need also for the protection of heritage sites and to stop the illicit trafficking with antiquities. And on that basis, we started working with Interpol, with the security people in many countries and we created with the customs authorities, and we started exchanging information, creating common data sites. And all this helped immensely to stop this, I would say, disastrous trafficking of objects of antiquities.

Irina Bokova  20:15

Then of course came several other important works that were done with the support, once again, of the United States, with the International Council of Museums with the support of UNESCO. It worked for a long time, for decades already, but in this particular moment, they focused on the so-called “red lists”. These red lists are lists of objects that are prohibited to cross borders, to pass to be exported, particularly in this case from Syria and Iraq. Then Libya was also added there. And gradually, momentum has been built around the importance of putting these three together. And I think that the most important, of course until this day, is the resolution of the Security Council that was adopted unanimously in March 2017, Resolution 2347. It is the only resolution dedicated entirely to the link between protection of heritage humanitarian efforts, peace and security.

Irina Bokova  21:23

And this gives a lot of, I would say, give a lot of opportunities to build on that and to create partnerships and to expand this work. And [this important understanding that has been embedded] quite matters. And I think this is also one of the great merits of this publication of mass atrocities and protection of heritage because it is exactly dedicated to all the different areas with specific approaches and debates, and a lot of debates on some of these areas are dedicated to examining this link. When I went to the Security Council, when the resolution 2347 was adopted, I was thinking a lot of what should I say to the members of the Security Council so that they understand what I’m talking about? And I chose the famous, of course, words of Heinrich Heine, that he said in 1822, the famous German poet who said, “when they burn books, they will, in the end, burn humans too.” And I think this is probably as relevant as it was past then, very relevant today.

John Torpey  22:44

Indeed. So it sounds like there’s a lot of legal architecture in place. A certain amount of momentum towards achieving these sorts of goals, but what do you think are the biggest kind of obstacles to greater success? And, who opposes these kinds of things?

Irina Bokova  23:04

Well, I think that nowadays, of course, as I said, there is a disregard of some of the legal instruments, there are rules nowadays that are not respected. Not only I would say, in this area. On one hand, I am tempted to say that there is a much higher understanding, even the fact that the International Criminal Court has convicted one of those who was part of the destruction of the mausoleums in Timbuktu was brought to the International Criminal Court. We worked with the chief prosecutor at those times, we put two legal teams together. And it’s the first time that we proved that this really infringed upon, it was a crime. And it falls within the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. And there was already the famous case of “Al Mahdi”, who was convicted of destruction of heritage.

Irina Bokova  24:09

Now, of course, on the other side, I would say that it is one such case by the ICC, the International Criminal Court last year, after a long years of work adopted a special framework on how to implement some of the provisions of the Rome Statute when it comes to destruction of heritage. But it is, I would say, more and more politically difficult to do what we have done in those times today. I would just give an example that in 2013, we could achieve the inclusion for the first time in the peacekeeping missions of the United Nations, the need to protect heritage. I’m speaking again about Mali. We included it in, and it was once again a breakthrough because usually the Security Council is reluctantly enlarging these areas. But the atrocities were so big and so obvious that they included it. Unfortunately, a few years later in 2018, it was taken away from the mandate of the UN peacekeepers. But I think this created a concrete precedent. And nowadays, we know that in many of the training of UN peacekeepers, heritage protection is part of their training, which did not exist before. So there is a momentum, it’s not, I would say, a straight road ahead. But nowadays, we are much more cognizant and more sensitive and much more alert that this is a crime, it should not happen.

John Torpey  25:43

Right. It’s a fascinating development. And we really appreciate you taking the time to give us an overview of the background and the sources of that momentum. And all of this is on display in the volume Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities edited by James Cuno and Tom Weiss, formerly of the Ralph Bunche Institute here at the CUNY Graduate Center. I want to thank Irina Bokova, former head of UNESCO for sharing her insight about the relationship between cultural heritage and mass atrocities. Look for us on the New Books Network and remember to subscribe and rate International Horizons on Spotify and Apple podcasts. I want to thank Oswaldo Mena Aguilar for his technical assistance as well as to acknowledge Duncan Mackay for sharing his song “International Horizons” as the theme music for the show. This is John Torpey, saying thanks very much for joining us and we look forward to having you with us for the next episode of International Horizons.