This edited volume is the culmination of a project initiated by the authors in 2017. The idea for the project stemmed from a shared observation that while notorious acts of heritage destruction in the context of armed conflict were garnering headlines and global attention, equally destructive and detrimental acts and policies, occurring outside of the context of armed conflict, were taking place on a day-to-day basis but were being met with comparative silence. Our objective was to bring together a diverse range of scholars who would reflect on both of these contexts – heritage destruction in armed conflict and heritage destruction in peacetime – through the shared lens of international law, and human rights law more generally. We were particularly conscious of the opportunity presented by the project to exploit the inherent inter-disciplinarity of the subject and to bring together international law scholars, heritage scholars, anthropologists, and archeologists to discuss heritage destruction through a nuanced and critical lens. With the generous support of the Leiden Global Interactions Fund, the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Global Heritage and Development, and the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, we convened and hosted an international symposium in Leiden in May 2018 on the topic of Heritage Destruction, Human Rights, and International Law. The papers presented and workshopped over the course of that three-day symposium form the basis of this volume.
We are extremely fortunate that some of the leading scholars working in the area of international cultural heritage law and practice agreed to participate in the international symposium and to contribute to this volume. We thank our wonderful contributors not only for their scholarship, but most particularly for their patience. The completion of this volume was impacted by the covid-19 pandemic and the resultant medium and long-term consequences that many of us have had to deal with. We are grateful that despite the numerous delays, they have maintained their faith and confidence that this volume would come to fruition.
We would also like to sincerely thank a number of individuals for their editorial assistance in bringing this volume to completion: Rafael Braga da Silva, Paula Baldini Miranda da Cruz, Eva de Dorsthorst, Deannie Yap, Rashid Ahmad, Brianna Dyer, and Maria Manuela Marquez Velasquez.
Amy Strecker
Dublin
Joseph Powderly
The Hague
November 2022