Stop Looters of History

To governments of non state-parties to the UNESCO Convention Prohibiting trade in Illicit Cultural Property.

This month, April 2003, the (cultural) world was shocked with the savage looting of the
Museum of History in Baghdad.

The lost material was described as of global significance in the evolution of civilization.

A looted vase was found in Uruk, one of the first major urban settlements in southern Mesopotamia and that means in the world.

Gone are objects that chronicled the early days of civilization. They include clay tablets imprinted with the world's first writing and the documentation of oldest human race achievements in advanced mathematical knowledge.
Finding these invaluable objects and getting them presented to us, the inheritors of this civilization, was possible thanks to huge efforts of dedicated excavators since 1840.

The loss is comparable to the burning of the library at Alexandria more than 1,000 years ago, or the Mongol invasion and burning of Baghdad in the 13th century.

Kofi Annan called it "a wound inflicted on all humankind.

It is only logical that humankind protects itself from such wounds, and it tried. The UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970), is the first achievement of these efforts. It is the first agreement of its kind to be accepted worldwide, seeking to protect cultural property against theft, illicit export and wrongful alienation.

There are 97 States Parties to this Convention, as of 9 December 2002.

What happened in Baghdad was an action of organized looting by people who knew what they were after and may have been stealing to order.

This was to a large extent possible because 87 countries did not join the Convention, making it easier for looters to sell the fruit of their crime. Such crimes would have been much discouraged if these countries stood to their moral duty, and closed the circle of the market of the looted artifacts.

The illicit trafficking in cultural property constitutes a crime against the world's cultural heritage. The protection of that cultural heritage must be the subject of international co-operation.

Therefore, to ensure that as much of the looted artifacts as possible, find its way back to where it belongs, and discourage such destruction to our cultural heritage in future, we appeal to these States that have not done so to become Party to the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970, as soon as possible.