Destroying UNESCO World Heritage: An Attack on the International Community?

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the current armed conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine, both States have actively pursued nominations to the World Heritage List established by the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Both Palestine and Ukraine have relied on emergency procedures to nominate certain sites, while simultaneously inscribing several other properties on the List of World Heritage in Danger. As the destruction of such cultural and natural heritage would be an impoverishment for the international community as a whole, this article will assess the influence that inscription on the World Heritage List has on the conviction of an individual for the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to art or historic monuments that are inscribed on the List. It will first focus on the existing jurisprudence of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia regarding the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against cultural property, before evaluating the current developments in Ukraine and Palestine concerning the inscription of World Heritage sites threatened by the ongoing conflicts.