Introduction

Those with specialist knowledge and interest have been concerned for many years about the effectiveness of current international law relating to the protection of cultural property in times of both what might be called traditional international wars and - especially - in the increasingly common internal armed conflicts, such as civil wars. Over the past quarter of a century cases of special international concern have included the fate of the rich archaeological heritage of south-east Asia during the Vietnam War, of Cyprus during and ever since the Turkish occupation, southern Mesopotamia during the Iran - Iraq War, and of the historic city of ??? during the Israeli and South Lebanese Army actions in southern Lebanon.

However, professional and expert concern has spilled over into widespread international concern among the general public and into the international media at the beginning of the 1990s because of two armed conflicts. The first was the Second Gulf War - the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the subsequent campaign to expel the occupying force, fought in part over the Mesopotamian region that was one of the birthplaces of western civilization. The second has been the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, above all the very public attacks on the undefended World Heritage List Old Town of Dubrovnik in Croatia, loved by millions of international tourists, and subsequently on the historic centre of Sarajevo and Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and particularly the destruction of the Stare Most bridge which gave Mostar its modern name.

In Autumn 1992 the Government of The Netherlands and the Executive Board of UNESCO decided to commission me to review the objectives and operation of the 1954 Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict known as 7th Hague Convention with a view to identifying measures for improving its application and effectiveness, and to see whether some revision of the Convention itself might be needed. My study was completed on schedule at the end of April 1993, and the final revised text was published by UNESCO in September 1993 in both English and French editions, (Boylan, 1993). However, you will understand that there is not enough time for me to cover today all the parts of my report of more than 96,000 words. Indeed just reading out my introductory 'Executive Summary and Recommendations'chapter would take more than twice the time I have available in this session. I therefore propose to focus on just three topics particularly relevant to this meeting's theme of the uses of information: (1) the historical background, (2) the present structure for protection of culture in times of armed conflict, and (3) some reflections on the psychology - or perhaps I should call it psychopathology - of cultural destruction in time of conflict.

Historical Background

Historically, the fate and treatment of cultural property have often been important issues in both international wars and in many kinds of internal armed conflicts, such as civil, religious and liberation wars. The taking of important moveable cultural symbols of invaded and conquered states and peoples as trophies of war (or merely for their economic value), and the defacing or destruction of monuments as marks of victory, have been important parts of the culture of the waging of war for millennia.

To give just two examples out of many thousands that could be cited, the famous golden horses of San Mark's. Venice, were captured from Constantinople in the looting of the city by the Venetians following its fall to the First Crusade on 13 April 1204 and were in turn seized by on the orders of Napoleon and taken to Paris in 1798, only to be returned under the imposed peace treaty of 1815.

Van Eyck's famous polyptych Adoration of the Mystic altarpiece for St Bavon's in Ghent, Belgium, was seized by France in the Napoleonic Wars and again by the Germans in both the First and Second World Wars (in the Second Work War with the Michelangelo Madonna and Child from the nearly Bruges Cathedral as well). Indeed, the restitution of the Van Eyck was a specific condition of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, (Boylan, 1993, p. 24).

The destruction, defacing or conversion to a deliberately inappropriate use of monuments of special cultural value to the identity and spiritual values of a conquered people - such as religious buildings and national historic sites - has been widely used throughout history as a sign of conquest and subjugation. Again, cases of this syndrome are far too numerous to list. However, obvious examples include Cortes'destruction of the religio-political centres of Aztec culture in Mexico City and Cuernavaca and the building of the colonial headquarters and Christian cathedrals on the desecrated sacred places, the numerous examples of forced conversions of Hindu temples into mosques in Mogul India, and of churches to mosques and vice versa over the centuries over much of the Near East and south-east Europe.

Such destruction and forced changes were if anything even more common in non-international strife, such as the internal religious wars in northern and central Europe during the Protestant reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which there were enormous losses of both building complexes such as churches and monasteries, and of cultural objects of religious significance, such as works of art, reliquaries and sacred vessels, and similar destruction again took place in the political revolutions of the 18th centuries and more recent times, beginning with the French Revolution.

However, as in many other areas of the laws or customs of war, the relevant modern international humanitarian law can be traced back to the classic five volume Vom Kreige of Carl von Clausewitz, published in 1832 (von Clausewitz, 1968, p. 374 - 375), and the United States of America War Department's General Orders No. I 00: Instructions for the Governance of the Andes of the United States in the Red drafted by Francis Lieber and first published in April 1863, (Wright, 1971, pp. 64 - 66).

In Book V Chapter III(B) Clausewitz stressed the principle of proportionality in relation to the conduct of war, and on the need to restrict the war effort to genuine military targets and imperatives, while cultural property was explicitly protected for the first time in Lieber's Code, which stressed that works of art, scientific collections, libraries and hospitals must be protected from injury even in fortified places whilst these were being besieged or bombarded. If necessary it could be removed (for its own safety) but it could not be given away or injured. Further, Article 44 of the Lieber Code declared that unauthorized destruction or damage of property was 'prohibited under penalty of death or other severe penalty adequate for the gravity of the offense'.

The first formal international treaty providing some protection for cultural property was that produced by the first (1899) Hague Conference, Regarding Respect for the Laws and Customs of War on Land, while the parallel rules governing naval bombardment tried to afford some protection to churches and other important cultural monuments, including provision for marking such protected buildings with a distinctive flag.

A more substantial international conference, convened jointly by the United States and Russia, and attended by forty-four sovereign states was held in The Hague in 1907, and this adopted a series of treaties relating to the Laws and Customs of War. Of these the Fourth Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on Land was most directly relevant, though the Ninth Hague Convention Concerning Bombardment by Naval Forces of War carried forward the Hague 1899 prohibition on the shelling from the sea of historic monuments etc.

The Regulations annexed to the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907 took the attempted protection of cultural monuments and institutions in times of land warfare further than any of the 19th century codes, providing that:

25. The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.

27. In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments ... provided that they are not being used at the time for military purposes. it is the duty of the besieged to indicate the presence of such buildings or places by distinctive and visible signs, which shall be notified to the enemy before hand.

However, despite the provisions of the Fourth Hague Convention there were grave losses of cathedrals, churches, other historic monuments, museums and libraries across the various land battlefields of the First World War, leading to much concern about the effectiveness of the existing Laws of War, partly in due to claims of 'military necessity' on the part of both attacking and defending forces. but also due to the development of new technologies of war, especially of poisonous gases and the development of aerial bombardment.

The next major development grew out of what was initially the private initiative and campaign of a remarkable individual, Nicholas K. Roerich. Born in St. Petersburg in 1874, Roerich trained as an artist and worked across Europe as an artist and designer, (the Paris premiere of the Diaghilev/Nijinsky ballet of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps was one of his theatre designs) before moving first to the United States and then to India and the Himalayas. Becoming increasingly committed to mysticism and oriental religion he used the Roerich Museum of his own paintings in New York as a base during his visits to the United States.

As early as 1904 he had developed proposals for an international pact for the protection of educational, scientific and artistic institutions and missions. In 1931 the first international conference was held in Bruges on the proposed 'Roerich Pact' and his proposal for a 'Banner of Peace' to be displayed to identify protected buildings and institutes of cultural importance. Soon afterwards the Montevideo conference of the Pan-American Union (the forerunner of the present-day Organisation of American States) passed a unanimous resolution urging all American states to sign the Pact.

Roerich soon had the patronage and support of both Eleanor Roosevelt and United States Secretary of Agriculture (and future presidential candidate) Henry Wallace. The result was the signing on Pan-American Day (15 April) 1935 by representatives of 21 American governments of the Roerich Pact as the Treaty of Washington, and the adoption of Roerich's Banner of Peace and official symbol of cultural protection. The full text of the Treaty (which is still in effect across all of North America and in most countries of Central and South America) provides that:

The historic monuments, museums, scientific. artistic, educational and cultural institutions shall be considered as neutral and as such respected and protected by belligerents. The same respect and protection shall be due to the personnel of the institutions mentioned above. The same respect and protection shall be accorded to the historic monuments, museums, scientific, artistic, educational and cultural institutions in time of peace as well as in war... In order to identify the monuments and institutions mentioned in Article 1. use may be made of a distinctive flag (red circle - with a triple red sphere in the circle on a white background) in accordance with the model attached to this treaty. [Boylan 1993, Appendix 3, pp. 177 - 178 reproduces the full text]

In Europe, the storm clouds of approaching war were gathering. In 1936, in the light of the reports of many clear breaches of the principles of the 1907 Hague Convention in the widespread cultural destruction in the Spanish Civil War, the 6th Commission of the League of Nations, 'following many requests from members of the [League's] International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation' commissioned the International Museums Office to re-examine 'the problem of the protection of monuments and works of art in times of war or of civil disturbances'.

Consequently in October 1936, the Board of the League of Nations' International Museums Office proposed a draft text intended to develop in far more detail the limited provisions of the 1907 Fourth and Ninth Hague Conventions and Regulations, and the more detailed proposals of the (unratified) 1923 Geneva draft Rules of Air Warfare under the proposed title of the International Convention for the Protection of historic Buildings and Works of art in event of War, (Office International des Musees, 1939, pp. 180 - 201). This began by emphasising the obligation on 'every Government' to prepare and arrange in peacetime ' for the protection of 'historic buildings and works of art' in war-time, including both physical arrangements and military training. All High Contracting Parties would refrain from any act of hostility against designated refuges for cultural property, though these were to be limited in number, open to international inspection.

Other provisions included the use of a distinctive mark, the exemption of historic buildings and works of art from reprisals, and immunity during transport of works of art being (including private collections) transfered temporarily under international supervision to a third country for protection.

The draft Convention was warily received and endorsed by the League of Nations' International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation, and active efforts were made by the professional community to try to apply its principles in the rapidly escalating Spanish Civil War, while pressing at the same time for the convening of the Intergovernmental Conference needed to take the project forward.

The scale of the cultural (as well as human) atrocities in Spain, coupled with the graphic demonstration of the implications of large-scale aerial bombardment using the new German warplanes of various types, including dive bombers and heavy bombers, together with other new types of heavy weapons, raised widespread alarm. In addition to protesting at the various Spanish attacks on historic cities and monuments, professionals and public authorities across much of Europe began to prepare air-raid precautions for many museums and monuments, including plans for the physical evacuation to places of safety - along the lines proposed in the International Museums Office draft Convention.

As a second Europe-wide war appeared inevitable, on 1 September 1939 President Roosevelt sent messages to the governments of Germany, France, Poland and the United Kingdom. Clearly referring to recent outrages such as those that had been happening in Spain, Roosevelt demanded assurances from all potential combatants that in the event of armed hostilities breaking out there should be no air attacks on civilian populations nor on unarmed towns.

The four potential belligerents replied positively giving clear assurances on these and related points, and - in effect - guaranteeing protection of non-military targets by the (ancient and traditional) means of mutual exchanges and guarantees of the respective rules of engagement for the forthcoming hostilities.

For example, on 1 September the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, insisted that:

'Tbe views expressed In the message of President Roosevelt, namely to refrain in all circumstances from bombing non-military targets... is a humanitarian principle. corresponding exactly to my own views, as I have already declared.... For my part, I presume that you have noted that, in my speech given today in the Reichstag. I announced that the German air force have received the order to limit thcir operations to military objectives. One obvious condition for the continuation of these instructions is that the air forces opposing us observe the same rules. (Office International des Musees, 1939, p.223)

The United Kingdom, French and Polish governments gave similar assurances on 1 September. With the start of the war on 3 September the British and French made public a Joint Declaration on aerial bombing which was much more detailed and explicit, including in addition to specific references to the avoidance of civilian populations and, 'to preserve with all possible measures, monuments of human civilisation' (Office International des Musees, 1939, p.224 - 226). 1 believe that this - very ancient -tradition of agreements between actual or potential belligerents on the fundamental Rules of Engagement for a conflict, still has a most important role.

The fundamental change of strategy came at the end of March 1943 with the British firestorm test-bombing of the undefended historic city of Lfibeck in gross violation of the express terms of the September 1939 agreement, lead directly to German reprisal bombings. (what were termed in England the'Baedeker Raids) of April and May 1942 on the English cathedral cities of Exeter, Norwich, York and Canterbury. (Boylan, 1993, p.35 - 36). Further, once these constraints had been abandoned in this way there was an almost immediate escalation to unrestrained mass bombing of the civilian populations on both sides with little or no pretence of military objectives. culminating in the rocket attacks on London in from 1944 and the senseless and indefensible destruction of Dresden.

This escalation of the war lead to a revival of concern about the need to protect important monuments and collections, and these worries grew as the western allies began to prepare for the liberation of continental Europe, and by this time alarming information was beginning to emerge about the scale of German destruction and looting on the eastern front, especially in Poland, and later in France.

In the 1943 Italian mainland campaign the Allied Supreme Commander in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, issued clear directions requiring his forces to respect and preserve cultural property. However, following widespread criticism of the destruction of the Monastery of Monte Cassino in February 1944, Eisenhower promulgated even more explicit rules of engagement on 26 May 1944 in advance of the Normandy landings:

Shortly we will be fighting out way across the Continent of Europe in battles designed to preserve our civilization. inevitably, in the path of our advance will be found historical monuments and cultural centers which symbolize to the world all that we are fighting to preserve. It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols whenever possible.... (Rorimer, 1950, p.x).

Present structures for cultural protection in times of armed conflict

The five years between 1944 and 1949 saw a series of extremely important world developments and events which, though not specifically relating to the legal protection of cultural property at the international level were to lay the Foundations for the post-war world, for good or ill.

On the negative side were the rapid escalation of the potential power and destructiveness of armaments. Most notable were the advances in aerial bombardment, first with the mass bombings using the new generation of heavy bombers creating unprecedented area devastation, culminating in the total destruction in February 1945 of the historic heart of Dresden, and then the use of atomic weapons, first on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki.

On the positive side was the creation of new international organisations with supporting international law -the creation of the United Nations and its Educational, Scientific and Cultural organisation, UNESCO, the Nuremberg Trials of those accused on war crimes, including the trial of Goering and Rosenberg for crimes against cultural property (Miller, 1975, p. 10), and major new developments in international humanitarian law drawing on the negative experiences of the Second World War, particularly the 1948 Genocide Convention of the United Nations. and the 1949 Geneva Conventions initiated by the Red Cross.

In relation to international cultural protection law, the pre-war work of the International Museums Office for the League of Nations was taken up, and the result was the adoption on 14 May 1954 of the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, the Hague, 1954, detailed Regulations for the practical implementation of the Convention (which form an integral part of it), and a separate Protocol for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. Collectively these inter-connected international instruments are generally referred to as 7th Hague Convention of 1954: this was originally published by UNESCO, but the text is also widely available elsewhere, e.g. in collected volumes of international treaties (e.g. UNESCO, 1985) or international humanitarian law (e.g. International Committee of the Red Cross. 1989), and in various academic and practical commentaries, most recently my own study (Boylan, 1992, Appendix 1, pp. 147 - 168).

Despite much debate and many differences of opinion on the details - particularly at the practical level - the 1954 Conference was clearly agreed on a number of important principles, particularly the concept of a valid international interest of the world community as cultural property as part of 'the cultural heritage of all mankind', requiring special legal measures at the international level for its safeguarding.

The Convention itself first defines within the single term 'cultural property' three different conceptual categories: (1) both immovable and moveable items which are themselves of intrinsic artistic, historic, scientific or other cultural value such as historic monuments, works of art or scientific collections, (2) premises used for the housing of movable cultural property, such as museums, libraries and archive premises, and (3) 'centres containing monuments' such as important historic cities or archaeological zones.

Protection is also offered by the Convention to temporary wartime shelters, to authorised means of emergency transport in times of hostilities, and to authorized specialist personnel: concepts derived directly from the protection for civilian air-raid shelters, hospitals and ambulances in relation to humanitarian protection in the Geneva Conventions, with explicit definitions of and rules relating to the Convention's concepts and interpretations of'protection', I safeguarding' and 'respect' for cultural property, and for its public identification by means of an official symbol are detailed and discussed in Chapter 4 of this report.

The Convention also deals with the question of occupied territories, placing explicit obligations on any High Contracting Party occupying all or part of the territory of any other Party to take measures 'as far as possible' to safeguard and preserve cultural property, and are required to support and co-operate with the competent national authorities (and official experts) in this. Chapter I of the Convention concludes with important provisions requiring the peace-time training of the armed forces.

Chapter II of the Convention introduces and regulates the concept of 'Special Protection'. Under this, UNESCO, after consulting all High Contracting Parties may place on a special list at the request of the state concerned. a limited number of temporary refuges or shelters for movable cultural property, and also 'centres containing monuments and other immovable property of very great importance', and subject to the defending State being both able and willing to demilitarise the location and its surroundings.

Chapter III provides protection and immunity modelled closely on that granted to ambulances under the Hague and Geneva Conventions, for official transport used in both internal and international transfers of cultural property, subject to prior authorization and international supervision of the movement.

Chapters IV - VII cover a wide range of provisions relating to the protection of personnel engaged in the protection of cultural property, details relating to the use of the official emblem of Hague Convention (a blue and white shield), and issues relating to the interpretation and application of the Convention: again all of these are closely modelled on the Geneva Conventions.

Of particular, and growing, importance was the decision of the 1954 Intergovernmental Conference to follow Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and extend the protection of cultural property beyond the traditional definition of 'war'into all armed conflicts including the difficult area of internal armed conflicts, such as civil wars, 'liberation' wars and armed independence campaigns, and - probably - to major armed terrorist campaigns.

In the years since the adoption of the 1954 Convention non-international armed conflicts, particularly those relating to internal strife along national, regional, ethnic, linguistic or religious lines, have become an increasingly common feature of the world order and in losses of monuments, museums, libraries and other cultural repositories.

Bearing in mind the importance of measures for enforcement, and indeed the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal rulings, the provisions for enforcement action and sanctions (Article 28) were remarkably weak and rather vague:

The High Contracting Parties undertake to take within the framework of their ordinary criminal jurisdiction. all necessary steps to prosecute and impose penal or disciplinary sanctions upon those persons, of whatever nationality, who commit or order to be committed a breach of the present Convention.

The Protocol for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict has two unambiguous purposes. First, a State Party to the Protocol undertakes to take active measures to prevent all exports of movable cultural property as defined in the Hague Convention from any territory which it may occupy during an armed conflict. Second, all High Contracting Parties undertake to seize and hold to the end of hostilities any cultural property from war zones which has been exported in contravention of the first principle of the Protocol. It also provides that such cultural property shall never be retained as war reparations.

Eighteen years after the adoption of the original 1949 Geneva Conventions, in 1977, an International Conference to review these and called by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and completed its work by consensus, ie. without a formal vote. The result was that the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 were substantially widened by the First Additional Protocol (relating to international armed conflicts) and the Second Additional Protocol (relating to non-international armed conflicts and serious civil disturbances).

In parallel provisions, each Protocol prohibits attacks on cultural or religious property 'which constitute the cultural and spiritual heritage of peoples' and the use of this for military purposes by either attacking or defending regular or irregular forces. More recently, on the proposal again of the International Committee of the Red Cross, a further Geneva Convention on prohibitions or restrictions on the use of certain conventional weapons which may be deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects was approved (in October 1980). The Second Protocol to the 1980 Convention, includes specific prohibitions on the use of booby-traps on, amongst other cases, cultural property.

Finally, but by no means least, for the first time since the Nuremberg trials of 1945 - 1948 allegations of breaches of international law in relation to cultural property are currently being actively investigated with a view to international proceedings - in relation to cultural destruction in the former Yugoslavia. By its Resolution 808 of 22 February 1993, the United Nations Security Council initiated formal procedures leading to the establishment of an international war crimes tribunal to investigate and act on allegations of 'grave breaches and other violations of international humanitarian law ... including ... destruction of cultural and religious property.

It is difficult to over-emphasise the potential importance of any test cases relating to 'cultural war crimes' under the planned United Nations proceedings in relation to former Yugoslavia, in order to demonstrate to the world the gravity of such allegations, and I look forward to seeing the report of the UN War Crimes Commission, which reported to the UN at the beginning of June 1994.

Recollections on the psychology of cultural destruction

The predominant viewpoints of so much of the world's current military and cultural leaders are Eurocentric - North Atlantic. Both experts and the general public have been first stunned, and then outraged, by events such as the current, highly publicised, wars in the former Yugoslavia (and the far less publicised ethnic conflicts in many regions of the sixteen newly independent republics of the former Soviet Union). In particular, deliberate destruction of cultural property in the former Yugoslavia has been on a horrendous scale. Expert assessments indicated that the cultural damage and loss in the first seven months of the 1991 Yugoslav/Serb fighting in Croatia was of a different order of magnitude from that of the devastating 1979 Montenegro earthquake, and greater than in the four years of the Yugoslav campaign of the Second World War, (Boylan, 1993, P. 117 - 118).

It has to be recognised that the deliberate targeting and destruction of important monuments and collections have become increasingly common features of both internal and international conflicts in many parts of the world. Only when this has ben seen by the international news media, especially television, to be happening in internationally famous tourist centres such as the World Heritage List city of Dubrovnik have non-specialists become aware of, and outraged by, this.

However, events such as these ought not to have been such a surprise. For at least two decades there has been a growing amount of research and published information on the rise of ethnic, racial and religious tensions in many parts of the world and of the parallel rise of 'internal' nationalisms in many parts of the world - not least in many countries of Europe suggesting a long term threat to world stability through the breakdown of present patterns of comparatively large, often multi-national and multi-ethnic political sovereign States, very largely created between about 1870 and 1920, (including of course most of the ex-colonial national frontiers in Africa and Asia). Against less than 200 sovereign states in the world even after the recent fragmentation of the former Socialist Block of Europe and Soviet Asia, across the world there are many thousands of geographical, ethnic and cultural 'peoples' who could claim (and in a growing number of cases are demanding) the status of 'nations' in the traditional rather than modern political sense, though increasingly the United Nations Charter's 'right of self-determination' following the principles and guarantees of Article I of the United Nations Charter is being claimed as well).

Far too little attention was paid to the implications of either overt or suppressed expressions of national or ethnic identity - at least until the explosions in the former Yugoslavia and the fragmentation of the former U.S.S.R. (and now Czechoslovakia), all along ethnic lines. One of the leading academic (and later in his career political) exceptions was Daniel Moynihan who as early as 1979 predicted the disintegration of the Soviet Union along ethnic lines:

Now the nationality strains begin. whatever Moynihan may have meant to intellectuals, it is ethnic identity that has stirred the masses in the twentieth century, and they are stirring near the Russia borders.... Since 1920 the Communists have rather encouraged ethnic culture, while ruthlessly suppressing ethnic politics. it won't work. (Quoted in Moynihan, 1993, pp. 39 - 40).

These discussions are not, of course, new. Arguments about the nature of social groups up to the political level go back at least to Plato and Aristotle, who recognised the way in which society is built up from the koinonia (koinonia = association or household), into the komia (komia = village or community) and then into the polis (polis = literally the city, but in Classical Greek times meaning the independent political state). Aristotle also recognised that whatever the level of the group conflicts leading to strife and bloodshed lead in turn to further division and fragmentation. Similarly, bonds of blood in terms of race and common family descent, of language, religion, class (or caste) or a mixture of some or all of these - a common culture or ethnicity - are increasingly powerful factors in the self-selection of peoples into ethnic or cultural units. These typically have shared underlying assumptions of the group regarding the physical and spiritual nature of the world, and their place in it - in geographical and social terms. The shared understanding of the values, conventions and sense of place of the group is an enormously important factor in creating the cohesion and the emergence of distinct ethnic or cultural 'peoples' in sense that the authors of the United Nations Charter appear to have intended. The very concept of 'culture', as well as any definition of it, is therefore far from an absolute one, but on the contrary is very much a product of the culture and values of those making the various self-definitions of it:

The idealist Appropriation of culture is thus not a matter of whim or taste (who cares what you call it), but an emergent production of definite structural and infrastructural conditions. (Harris, 1980, p. 404).

Though it is in principle easy to distinguish between natural groupings: blood-relation groupings - from families to kinsmen and ultimately to the concept of the race, and artificial groupings: voluntary associations of peoples, such as groups based on religion, distinct (and perhaps isolated or otherwise) clearly defined geographical territory, language, or cultural practices, which together create distinct ethnic units. However, these are far from fixed in either space or time: discussing the 'Idea of Race', Michael Banton commented:

As peoples can understand their history only through the concepts of their own time, it is continually necessary to rewrite history in the light of new concerns and understandings. Equally, people interpret their own time in the light of their beliefs about the past, and if they misunderstand their past they cannot properly understand their present. (Banton, 1977, p.3.)

In fact, following the wanton destruction of physical symbols of 'the other' in the religious wars starting with the Crusades and continuing intermittently through to those of the Protestant Reformation and on into the 17th century, there was a degree of stability and respect for peoples, at least within Europe. However, old divisions and conflicts in new battles began to arise and accelerate from the early years of the 19th century:

The modern ideas of race, class, and of nation, arose from the same European millieu and share many points of similarity. All three were exported to the furthest points of the globe and have flourished in many foreign soils. In so far as men have believed that it was right to align themselves on the basis of race, class and nation, or have believe that these would become the major lines of division, so these ideas have proved their own justification. (Banton, 1977, pp. 3- 4).

In seeking to protect the patrimony, whether international, national, regional or local in times of armed strife, we need a two pronged attack.

First, there is an important, and growing, role for International Law in support of this ideal. However. my study, based on extensive consultations across the world, shows that the fundamental international humanitarian law is still sound: what it lacks is international recognition, acceptance and enforcement, especially at the national level.

Second, and even more important - we must change the minds and hearts of people so that they recognise that what they are either neglecting or deliberately destroying in wars and other armed conflicts are not just the cultural symbols of an enemy - whether an international enemy, or just a person of a different racial, ethnic or religious group living in the next village or even the next house. Humanity is a single species less than 4,000 generations old, with what is ultimately a common, though rich and diverse, culture. Destroying the physical evidence of any part of this is not just an attack on the enemy's culture; it is equally an attack on our own culture.

8 July 1994