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Looted excavations, the looting of cultural heritage sites and the illegal trade in stolen and unlawfully exported cultural artefacts are a global problem. The criminal trade in cultural property is at the forefront of global crime statistics, alongside arms and drug trafficking and cybercrime.

At an international conference on 11 and 12 December 2014 at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, experts will discuss how politics, science and cultural institutions can better respond to looted excavations and the illegal trade in cultural property and what national and international measures are needed to do so.

On the first day, the programme provides for representatives of numerous countries particularly affected by looted excavations and looting to assess the situation in various regions and thus obtain an up-to-date overview of the situation, especially in crisis regions. On the second day, legal and administrative mechanisms that could serve as models for the development of effective cultural property protection will then be discussed.

Grütters: New legal basis against illegal trade

Prof Monika Grütters, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and Minister of State for Culture and the Media, emphasises the importance of the conference and explains: "This is an important contribution to the preservation of humanity's cultural heritage. Looted excavations and the illegal trade in cultural property jeopardise this heritage. It is our task to raise awareness of this and to create a more effective legal framework for the protection of national cultural identity. With the amendment of cultural property protection law in Germany, I will present a draft law in the coming year that will reorganise the legal basis and thus make a significant contribution to combating the illegal trade in cultural property."

Böhmer: International terrorism benefits

The Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office, Maria Böhmer, who is also Chair of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, emphasises: "The trade in illegally exported cultural property is increasingly becoming an important source of funding for international terrorism. Syria and Iraq, two great cultural nations, are currently experiencing not only a human but also a cultural catastrophe. The European Union has already banned the import, export and trade in illegally exported Iraqi and Syrian cultural artefacts. But that is not enough. The trade in illegally exported cultural artefacts must be banned and stopped worldwide. Art dealers and art lovers must also realise that by buying and selling illegally exported antiquities, they run the risk of financing terrorist organisations such as the Islamic State."

Parzinger: Science is losing the context of finds

One of the hosts of the conference, the President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and President of the German Association for Archaeology, Prof. Dr Hermann Parzinger, added: "Cultural property must be protected more effectively, because it not only has a material value: a country's archaeological heritage fundamentally creates identity. This also applies to countries in crisis and societies undergoing reconstruction. Illegal excavations result in the loss of important find contexts for science, entire excavation sites and excavation contexts are destroyed forever - archaeological investigations that could assign the objects to a time or culture are no longer possible as a result. Important findings are thus irretrievably lost. The conference will have to find new answers to the threatening current situation."

Fless: A global stance is needed

"Looted excavations are an international phenomenon. However, our knowledge of the extent of the destruction of cultural heritage varies greatly. It is difficult to get a concrete picture in the war zones. We know where and to what extent archaeological cultural property is being illegally excavated from the objects that appear in the art trade, from satellite images and from reports from the countries. Only concrete measures and a common international stance can help to put a stop to this trade and its source, the worldwide looted excavations," says Friederike Fless, President of the German Archaeological Institute.

Background

Political crises, economic emergencies and not least the actions of terrorist organisations are destroying cultural property, making it difficult to monitor archaeological sites and turning the trade in illegally excavated objects into a lucrative business. From the Near and Middle East to Asia, Latin America and Africa, looting, plundering and the illegal trade in cultural artefacts threaten the cultural heritage of mankind. Looted excavations are also a problem in Europe: self-proclaimed amateur archaeologists, for example, use probes to search for lost "treasures", thereby destroying important archaeological contexts.

In 2007, by acceding to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on "Measures to prohibit and prevent the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property", Germany committed itself under international law to take action against the illegal trade in cultural property and to return unlawfully exported cultural property. The Cultural Property Restitution Act was therefore passed in 2007 to implement this into national law. At the same time, the Bundestag and Bundesrat requested that the effects of the Act be evaluated. The Federal Government's report on the protection of cultural property in Germany was therefore presented in April 2013. The report recommends numerous legal changes. Minister of State for Culture Prof Monika Grütters is therefore currently drafting a new law in line with new EU legislation.

Registration for the conference

Registration: please email
Registration deadline: 24 November 2014
Conference fee: 30 euros
Account: German Association for Archaeology
IBAN DE07 1004 0000 0720 7061 01
BIC COBADEFFXXX
Purpose: Conference fee for cultural property protection

Please note: Registration is only valid once the conference fee has been paid. You will receive a confirmation of registration upon receipt of the conference fee. The conference fee cannot be refunded if you do not attend the conference.

Accreditation for press representatives

Until 9 December 2014, 2 p.m., by fax or e-mail. Limited admission. We will confirm your registration by 10 December.

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Further information

• Press release with accreditation form (PDF, 152 KB, not barrier-free)
• Conference notice with information on registration modalities