Picking up the pieces: Transitional justice responses to destruction of tangible cultural heritage
| Author | Sinéad Coakley,Pádraig McAuliffe |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09240519221113121 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Picking up the pieces:
Transitional justice responses to
destruction of tangible cultural
heritage
Sinéad Coakley
Law and Criminal Justice, Liverpool John Moores University, UK and University of
Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
Pádraig McAuliffe
Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
Abstract
The intentional destruction of tangible cultural heritage is commonplace in contemporary conflict.
Heritage has immense social, symbolic, and spiritual value and its destruction reveals a broader
attack on cultural identity and coexistence. Transitional justice (TJ) efforts have largely neglected cul-
tural destruction as part of a wider marginalisation of cultural rights. This articleconsiders why this is
the case and argues that TJ has a meaningful role to play in engaging with issues of collective identity
by countering harmful narratives of difference and recognising the legitimacy of cultural variance. It
explores the ways TJ can incorporate cultural destruction within the remit of truth commissions,
shape educational curricula and influence physical reconstruction of destroyed heritage. In so
doing, it can give effect to the indivisibility and interdependence of civiland political, socio-economic,
and cultural rights.
Keywords
Transitional justice, tangible cultural heritage, truth commissions, reparations, cultural rights
1. INTRODUCTION
A fundamental principle of human rights, be they civil and political, socio-economic or cultural, is
that they are indivisible and interdependent. One set of rights cannot be enjoyed fully without the
others. It is assumed that progress in one set of rights makes it easier to exercise other types.
Transitional justice (TJ) has traditionally had a liberal-legalist orientation towards civil and political
Corresponding author:
Sinéad Coakley, Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Email: Sinead.Coakley2@liverpool.ac.uk
Article
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights
2022, Vol. 40(3) 311–332
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/09240519221113121
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rights, though in the last ten years this has been consciously balanced by an increased attention to
socio-economic rights.
1
However, TJ ‘has generally and systematically ignored claims of culture,’
and by extension, cultural rights.
2
This article explores how and why TJ has been relatively slow to
address cultural rights deprivation, making the argument that without attending to these abuses, key
identity-based grievances in the conflict end up being marginalised in comparison to political and
distributive injustices, thereby undermining the indivisibility and interdependence of human rights.
This is demonstrated in the context of intentional damage to tangible cultural heritage.
Intentional damage of cultural heritage is ‘seemingly now the norm’in contemporary conflict.
3
Since the end of the Cold War, displays of destroyed or damaged tangible culture heritage are
among the most iconic images of war. Few descriptions of the Bosnian war fail to mention the col-
lapse of the Stari Most bridge caused by shelling in Mostar. Al Qaeda’s bombing of one of the
holiest mosques in Shia Islam, namely the al-Askari mosque in Samarra, and the partial destruction
by the Tamil Tigers of the Buddhist Temple of the Tooth in Kandy were key inflection points in the
Iraqi and Sri Lankan civil conflicts. Ansar Al Dine’s attacks on the mausoleums of Sufishrines in
Timbuktu and the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas were broadcast for the world to
see. The Islamic State’s explosions of Nimrud and the temples at Palmyra, to say nothing to the
obliterated carvings at Hatra, were aspects of the Syrian civil war that became seared into the
global consciousness. At the time of writing, damage to almost 200 cultural heritage sites in
Ukraine has been observed since the Russian invasion started in February 2022.
4
Less attention is paid to destruction of libraries, sites of worship, archives or monuments that do
not have what the UNESCO Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and
Natural Heritage calls ‘outstanding universal value.’
5
Examples include damage to, or destruction
1. Frank Haldemann and Rachel Kouassi, ‘Transitional Justice without Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights?’in Eibe
Riedel and others (eds), Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Contemporary Issues and Challenges (Oxford
University Press 2014) 498.
2. Pablo de Greiff, ‘Preface: On Making the Invisible Visible: The Role of Cultural Interventions in Transitional Justice
Processes’in Clara Ramirez-Barat (ed), Transitional Justice, Culture, and Society: Beyond Outreach (Social Science
Research Council 2014) 12. See also Colin Luoma, ‘Closing the Cultural Rights Gap in Transitional Justice:
Developments from Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’(2021) 39
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 32, 35–39.
3. Helen Walasek, ‘Cultural Heritage and Memory after Ethnic Cleansing in Post-Conflict Bosnia-Herzegovina’(2019) 101
International Review of the Red Cross 273, 274.
4. Vanessa Thorpe, ‘Crimes against history: mapping the destruction of Ukraine’s culture’,The Guardian, (24 April 2022)
accessed 4th July 2022. Lest this list exonerate by omission States in the liberal West, it is of course worth bearing in mind
that cultural heritage was destroyed and removed consistently throughout the colonial era, as a visit to most major world
museums will demonstrate (See Pádraig McAuliffe, ‘Complicity or Decolonization? Restitution of Heritage from
‘Global’Ethnographic Museums’(2022) 15 International Journal of Transitional Justice 678).
5. Preamble, Article 1 and Article 2. This treaty does not deal directly with how to treat destruction of tangible cultural heri-
tage after conflict. Indeed, none of the main UNESCO Treaties deal directly with how to treat destruction of tangible
cultural heritage after conflict. The Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict
(1954) deals with protection of heritage during conflict. The Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing
the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970) and Convention on the Protection of
the Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001) do not address the legacies of intentional destruction in conflict. The
Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) does not cover tangible cultural heritage.
The Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005) was primarily a
response to concerns relating to the trade in media goods and services and deals with cultural expressions produced
by artists and cultural professionals.
312 Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 40(3)
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