Thursday 24 July 2014

UK Dragging Feet on Cultural Protection


Criticism of repeated delays in the UK ratifying the Hague Convention  (Anny Shaw, 'Experts condemn British government for failure to ratify convention protecting cultural property' The Art Newspaper 21 July 2014)
Politicians and leading archaeologists have criticised the British government for failing to ratify the Hague Convention in the current parliamentary session. MPs and peers lobbied the government to introduce the necessary legislation at the beginning of the parliamentary year in June, but no bill was included. The Hague Convention was originally drawn up in 1954 and amended in 1999 to protect cultural property in the event of armed conflict. The UK is the only major Western power that has not ratified the treaty. In a letter published in the Daily Telegraph newspaper [...]  21 July, Nicholas Trench, the Earl of Clancarty who is a Crossbench peer, described Britain’s failure to ratify the treaty as “mystifying”[...]  The letter has been co-signed by nearly 100 supporters and experts from the art world [...]  “Why, after 60 years, has Britain still not ratified? The sense is that, as with all matters cultural, which end up low down in the political pecking order, it has simply neglected to do so. It is high time that the government put this right."
This is a repeat of what happened at the end of March 2012 (UK must Ratify 1954 Hague Convention). Perhaps we need to get more militant, how about a letter every two months instead of one every two years? See (ahem) also here....
 

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