ILLICIT TRAFFICKING OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE FROM IRAQ

ADDRESSING THE HUMAN RIGHTS IMPLICATIONS

Resumo

The cultural heritage of Iraq has been undergoing unprecedented attacks since 2003 due to intentional destruction, cultural cleansing and illicit trafficking. The increasing demand in antiquities drives both the online and offline markets and, respectively, fuels the extensive looting. Recently, the issue has entered the agenda of the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights advocating for the development of holistic rights-based approaches to cultural heritage protection and recognizing that looting, smuggling and illicit trafficking in cultural objects violate or abuse cultural rights. Thus, a number of human rights violations occur along the illicit trafficking chain from source countries to the market. When illegally excavated, archaeological sites, their historical contexts and artefacts themselves are often destroyed, which deprives both the local community and the humanity as a whole of their right to access cultural heritage with knowledge, values and identity it contains. Furthermore, due to its high historic, cultural and economic value, archaeological heritage represents an important development factor for its context of origin, if properly valorised, protected and studied in its context of origin. Becoming a source of income for conflict-tormented areas, archaeological heritage can contribute to creating employment opportunities in cultural industry and tourism sectors and, as a consequence, to raising the level of living of local communities. Analysed from the above perspective, the illicit antiquities trafficking appears to bear significant implications for a series of human rights, both in their individual and collective dimensions. However, there is still an evident lack of empirical knowledge and academic research on human rights implications of illicit trafficking in archaeological heritage. Therefore, in line with the agenda of the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, the present paper addresses the initial hypothesis that the identification of the human rights implications of the illicit antiquities trafficking may be harnessed towards a positive evolution of relevant international law, contributing thus to the enhancement of the overall protection of cultural heritage as a bearer of human dignity and driver of sustainable development. The present paper is part of a larger PhD project that examines the case study of Iraq as a pilot empirical research aimed at a thorough investigation and mapping human rights implications related to depredation and illicit commercialization of the country’s archaeological heritage.