| Parliamentary Assembly Assembl�e parlementaire |
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Ending the plundering of African cultural objects
Doc. 10063
4 February 2004
Report
Committee on Culture, Science and Education
Rapporteur: Mr Jacques Legendre, France, Group of the European
People’s Party
For debate in the Standing Committee — see Rule 15 of the Rules of Procedure
Summary
Trade in African art is fashionable but much of it is trafficking (legal trade in objects of uncertain provenance) or illegal. Control therefore relates to the general problems of controlling the art market. This is an international issue but should also be tackled on a national basis. It involves co-operation between governments and governmental authorities (customs and police), museums (public and private), the art trade and the collecting public.
Much of African art reaches the international market because of problems in the countries of origin. These range from extreme economic poverty to inadequate export control or policing (true also of many west European countries). The lack of appropriate infrastructures or interest to protect cultural property and especially archaeological sites are significant factors. This is a development issue calling for North-South co-operation.
In committing itself to the adoption of measures to put an end to the pillaging of African art and to the creation, in this field too, of balanced exchanges, the Council of Europe is showing that it recognises the equal dignity of European and African civilisations and that it intends to develop between them a living dialogue, a dialogue between equals.
I. Draft recommendation [Link to the adopted text]
1. The plundering of African cultural objects is part of the dark side of relations between Africa and many European countries. Most of these objects remain in Europe in substantial private and public collections.
2. The growing fashion for collecting representative objects from African civilisations is exerting a new pressure on the states from which these objects originate and one that it is difficult for them to resist. The prices reached by such objects on the international market encourage trafficking of all forms, including the illegal raiding of archaeological sites. Many of these African countries are little aware of what they are losing and ill equipped to give their cultural heritage appropriate protection.
3. The Parliamentary Assembly believes that the same respect should be shown for the dignity of African art as for European or any other. Europe should take action to end the plundering of the African cultural heritage and to assist its proper appreciation and protection in the countries of its origin.
Regarding the art trade
4. While the lawful art trade may be encouraged (especially with regard to contemporary African art), the illegal trade must be stemmed (especially with regard to stolen and illegally excavated antiquities). Measures must be taken by governments and by the art trade itself. But the African cultural heritage should be accorded the same degree of protection as the European one and the same principles applied to trade of African cultural property as to that of Western or European art.
5. The Assembly calls on the art trade to apply the same high standards to the control of the selling of African cultural objects as to that of art from western and other civilisations. This is particularly relevant to insistence on certificates of origin, of export and of title.
6. The Assembly calls on public and private museums to apply the Icom Code of Ethics for Museums and in particular the principle of refusing unprovenanced and uncertificated cultural property, to the acquisition of African as to that of other art.
7. The Assembly recalls its Recommendations 1072 (1988) on the international protection of cultural property and the circulation of works of art and 1372 (1998) on the Unidroit Convention on stolen or illegally exported cultural property. It requests in particular the Committee of Ministers to urge member states to ratify the relevant international instruments relating to control of the art trade, to increase their efforts to control the illicit circulation of cultural property and to apply them to trade in African cultural property.
8. More specifically the Assembly recommends that the Committee of Ministers invite governments of member states to:
i. disseminate regularly the lists published by Unesco, Icom and Interpol indicating objects that have been registered as stolen, particularly those from the African continent, and make available any databases indicating cultural objects that have been illegally exported to dealers and buyers;
ii. warn their own institutions against the purchase of any illegally exported objects;
iii. train police and customs officials in searching for illegally exported objects and in collaborating with similar officials in other countries and through Interpol;
iv. restore illegally exported cultural objects to the countries of origin, if necessary after compensating purchasers who have bought “in good faith”, as set out in the 1995 Unidroit Convention.
Regarding return
9. The Assembly has on several occasions been faced with appeals for the return of cultural property. It takes the view that such questions are best left to bilateral negotiation on a case-by-case basis. It welcomes the efforts of the Unesco Intergovernmental Committee in this context. The Assembly itself continues to offer its good offices on cases brought to its attention and recalls the role of the General Rapporteur on the Cultural Heritage (Committee on Culture, Science and Education) in that context.
Regarding infrastructures in Africa for heritage protection and awareness
10. The Assembly believes that one major objective should be to ensure that significant African cultural property remains in the countries of its origin. This requires adequate protection. Substantial action is therefore required in the African countries themselves to:
i. enact and implement appropriate legislation for protection of the heritage;
ii. train police and customs officials;
iii. eradicate corruption;
iv. establish infrastructures for the protection of the cultural heritage (museums and trained personnel);
v. promote local awareness of heritage and of cultural identity (schools and media);
vi. promote also awareness of the significance of contemporary African artistic creativity.
11. The Assembly welcomes the programmes now being conducted to this end by Unesco and the international non-governmental organisations as well as the bilateral programmes involving European and African states. It calls on member states to give their support to these programmes.
12. It also calls on member states of the Council of Europe to:
i. include methods of assisting with setting up, maintaining and renovating establishments to preserve, study and enhance representative objects from African civilisations in their co-operation agreements with countries from that continent;
ii. include measures to promote the training of scientific staff in studying, restoring and enhancing African cultures’ heritage in such agreements;
iii. invite, in particular, the European Union to include such measures in its agreements with African, Caribbean and Pacific states;
iv. finally, promote the conservation, restoration, study and promotion of legally acquired cultural objects from the African civilisations in their own universities, history of art institutions and museums, including through assistance from African scientific staff.
Regarding further cultural co-operation with Africa
13. Further to its Recommendation 1590 and Resolution 1313 (2003) on cultural co-operation between Europe and the South Mediterranean countries, the Assembly wishes to promote the organisation of occasional conferences with parliamentary representatives from the Sub-Sahara region on cultural issues of common interest such as the protection of African cultural property.
14. It invites the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Francophonie to collaborate in such initiatives as well as the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe.
15. The Assembly welcomes the regional initiatives within Africa for the development of cultural heritage awareness (such as the School for African Heritage in Benin or the European Union support for the restructuring of museums in Kenya). It asks the Committee of Ministers to consider how the Council of Europe itself might support the development of such initiatives, for example by promoting a framework of cultural co-operation in Africa along the lines of that provided in Europe by the European Cultural Convention.
Regarding the global black market
16. The Assembly is alarmed at the growth in the global black market for cultural property and is concerned that countries throughout the world are being stripped of their cultural heritage for sale to dealers in Europe and the United States. It calls for concerted bilateral and international action against this illegal trade as against the illegal traffic in arms, persons and drugs.
II.
Explanatory memorandum
by Mr Legendre
A. Introduction
This report originates from the disturbing observation of the impoverishment of the African cultural heritage as a result of illegal trading, in particular from clandestine excavations and even thefts, including from museums.
It is based on a hearing held in the French Senate in Paris in March 2003 and which helped better identify the full range of questions.
The conclusions have since been confirmed by subsequent contacts and visits with representatives of African countries and most particularly in the Sub-Sahara region.
Discussion now should follow in the Assembly in plenary debate.
B. Scope
The scope of the report is considerable. Four main strands may be distinguished.
I. African art has been plundered in the colonial period and large private and national collections of African art built up. Can the process be reversed? This is the vexed question of returns.
II. Trade in African art is fashionable but much of it is trafficking (legal trade in objects of uncertain provenance) or illegal. Control therefore relates to the general problems of controlling the art market. This is an international issue but should also be tackled on a national basis. It involves cooperation between governments and governmental authorities (customs and police), museums (public and private), the art trade and the collecting public.
III. Much of African art reaches the international market because of problems in the countries of origin. These range from extreme economic poverty to inadequate export control or policing (true also of many west European countries). The lack of appropriate infrastructures or interest to protect cultural property and especially archaeological sites are significant factors. This is a development issue calling for north-south cooperation.
IV. Cultural objects should be recognised as expression of the creativity of an individual people and the reflection of its memory. They are not to be reduced to the status of mere commodities. This is a matter of Africa taking its place in the campaign to promote cultural diversity.
French President Jacques Chirac stressed this last point in his message to the hearing in Paris in March 2003. It was also underlined in Recommendation 1072 (1988) para 4 when the Assembly first tackled the problem of the art trade on the basis of a report by Mr Rodot� and a hearing held in Lausanne.
The question of returns is controversial and in combating the wider problem is an unnecessary distraction. The present report will for more practical reasons limit itself to the middle two strands, which are closely linked with each other and with Africa.
C. What are these African cultural objects? And why is there a problem?
African art objects range from modern mass-produced folk art sold to tourists (animal wood carvings, printed cotton shawls etc) to more sophisticated contemporary art and more ancient artefacts.
The immense African continent, with the range of different cultures that have developed there, has produced works of art that are both original, mysterious and an aspect of the universal search for beauty.
As these works came to light in the course of the exploration of the continent, they exercised a real fascination on European connoisseurs.
This meeting of the cultures of Africa and of Europe has two aspects:
- knowledge of African art was a revelation and a radical inspiration for European artists, painters and sculptors, from Picasso and Braque to the German expressionists, the surrealists and the contemporary Spanish painter Miguel Barcel�
- the other aspect, however, was its misappropriation, following the intrusion of colonisation and without any respect for the cultures that produced the art, and its transfer to museums set up, not locally but in European capitals and to private collections outside Africa.
Admiration of African art paradoxically can be destructive if it does not recognise the dignity of the cultures which produced that art and if it is based on ransacking the sites from which it comes.
What is worse is that the profits on the sale of this art is being made by intermediaries, especially western art dealers, and not by Africans.
We need also to define more clearly what objects should be protected and conserved in the communities where they were made and draw up criteria of age or rarity, of value whether cultural, historical or social, and of beauty with due respect for the criteria by which the local authorities might themselves judge these objects.
Advanced techniques should be used to preserve the original objects, taking account of climate, especially in the tropics, and the specific requirements of fragile material such as wood or leather. (In Japan for this reason temples are often totally rebuilt). Possibly local craftsmen might be encouraged to produce copies to satisfy an international export demand.
As with the Christian Orthodox views of the iconostasis, many African cultural objects have a cult value that is not related to their cultural or artistic value. Such items belong to no one but to their context and cannot be sold. Apparently in certain cases African cult objects can be deconsecrated. But this cannot be deduced from inspection. It should be part of the criteria for export licence.
Africans might well be offended by the continuing ethnographic approach and the greed of collections based on a reductionist ordering of objects that are the expression of a complex culture.
D. The threats from Europe
Transfer and extortion
For long Europeans followed the practice of protecting their movable heritage by centralising it in institutions built naturally in their capitals (for example the Provencal masterpiece, the Avignon Piet�, was moved to Paris).
In the same way, and with a view to ethnological study and cultural promotion, in the colonial period Europeans transferred many works of art from Africa to central public or private collections. Those objects that belong to private owners are considered to be legally traded on the international art market.
Many however have been, and continue to be, taken out of Africa under the mask of civil wars and the breakdown of civil authority.
Can action be taken to stop the illicit movement and possibly reverse it?
International agreements have been made to protect cultural property in time of war (The Hague Convention of 1954). A recent protocol has been added to cover civil war (inspired by the Balkans but surely relevant to Africa). Two areas of controversy are the application of such principles retroactively to items taken in the historical past (Parthenon sculptures) and to property owned by individuals (victims of the Holocaust).
The question of restitution was tackled by a hearing held by the Belgian Senate in January 2003. It is a real issue. But in a sense it is a secondary issue. First it is necessary to stop the plundering, this involves the establishment of a secure local structure, that is in turn a condition for discussion of return. It is essentially a bilateral matter and for case-by case investigation. The case of Africa is comparable to northern Cyprus or Iraq.
But there is also the argument that Africa has lost much of its cultural heritage in physical terms. It must be returned if it is to be appreciated at all. This is not like the demand by the Greeks for the return of the Parthenon sculptures. Most Greeks are fully aware of ancient Greek art and have a vast amount of material in Greece to visit. The Africans of today have little idea of their heritage (a matter of education) and virtually nothing to see (a matter of museums). 90% of African art is outside Africa
Private and public collecting
The museums of the major colonial powers have inherited indirectly (from collectors) or directly much of the cultural heritage of Africa. Three of the major museums were represented in the March 2003 Paris hearing: the British Museum, Tervuren and Quai Branly Paris.
It is clear that these museums have radically updated their positions regarding the African countries from which their collections come. Some continue to collect (Tervuren and the BM) but do so in collaboration with the local African museums.
All the European museums in question stressed adherence to the principle of not accepting material of doubtful provenance. But there appears to be some variation in practice both in Europe and in other parts of the developed world. At the Paris hearing we were told of museums which asked for export licences for objects already purchased where the code would require them not to purchase in the first place.
Codes of practice exist and notably the Icom Code of Ethics for Museums (adopted 1986 and amended 2001). Clearly there is a need to insist on strict adherence to such codes of practice. But this must be world-wide (and include the US and Japan). Otherwise individual museums and collectors will seize their opportunities.
The art trade
The objective of his report is not to condemn or prevent the art trade but to promote the legal trade and the honest dealers and collectors who by their interest do much to protect the cultural heritage and promote interest in it.
Cultural objects may come from illegal activity: clandestine excavation or theft. Plunder or spoils of war are another undesired source. All these sources feed the market, the art trade.
Archaeological items (of considerable antiquity) normally come from excavations. In most countries (but not all - even in Europe) such excavations are now carefully controlled. But this has not always been so and it is impossible to tell whether antiquities on the market have come from “legal” private collections. National legislation however can control their export. One problem of controlling material from clandestine excavations is that it is impossible to prove its origin as this has never been recorded.
Stolen items are more easily identified but only as long as a record exists of their belonging to a collection (private or public).
Trafficking is the legal trade in items of illegal provenance. Till recently the owner of an object was assumed to have title unless it could be proved to the contrary. There is a move to reverse the onus of proof (as in the Unidroit Convention of 1995) so that an owner has to prove “bona fide” ownership. This condition of proper acquisition only applies to items of great value and requires verification that the purchaser of such items would have anyway made if only to establish the price and the correct nature of the proposed transaction. Naturally this condition is fiercely resisted by art dealers and collectors even though it only applies to sales of exceptional objects and does not affect day to day trading.
Auction is held to be a means of establishing title. For that reason it is a particularly important area by which the market in African art can be better regulated.
Otherwise the most normal manner of trading in cultural property is through art dealers, antique shops and fairs. The art dealers and auction houses have their own codes of practice. The International Confederation of Art Dealers (CINOA) has its guidelines (1987 amended 1998). Unesco has proposed an International Code of Ethics for Dealers in Cultural Property (launched In 2000). It is not clear how either directly tackles the key question of unprovenanced art objects. They should however be encouraged as a complement to the 1995 Unidroit Convention.
The trade in African cultural objects does not differ significantly from the trade in other areas of art. There are naturally specific channels and contacts, specialities and fashion trends. The point however is that the same attention should be given to controlling this trade and respecting ethical practice as to the trade in the more established areas of art (Old Masters or oriental ceramics for example). This is part of the question of bestowing due respect and recognition on the artistic value of African cultural objects.
The unequal terms of exchange is perhaps the most shocking feature of the “trade” in African cultural objects. The tourist from rich countries can afford to buy out the African tribe. The prices the art trade commands put often irresistible economic pressure on the communities which still possess the heritage. This encourage theft and feed corruption.
Action - International legal instruments
The Assembly has frequently urged Council of Europe action to control the illegal art trade (see appendix). But in fact not much has been done on the intergovernmental level (Delphi 1985 was never ratified and Valletta 1992 art 10 on “illicit circulation” is not substantive).
Unesco is addressing questions related to disputes between states (on the basis of the 1970 and 1972 Conventions). The main body responsible is the Intergovernmental Committee for promoting the return of cultural property to its countries of origin or its restitution in case of illicit appropriation which has met regularly since 1979 to discuss cases between states.
The Unidroit Convention of 1995 attempts to deal with cases of private individuals (as well as states) seeking to recover works of art through a foreign court. It is highly contested, and not only by the art dealers and collectors, as certain police and customs also claim it is too imprecise.
The approach of the European Union can be regretted in that it is more related to free movement of “goods” than respectful of “national treasures” that Article 36 of the Treaty of Rome excluded from the rules of the “common market” and despite the fact that more recent EU texts call for respect of the “cultural identity” of member states.
Action – Policing
This is the obvious level of action but it is a matter of priorities. International cooperation is improving and in particular with the realisation of the relations between the involved in the illegal trafficking of arms, drugs, persons and works of art.
The circulation of lists of stolen items by Unesco, Interpol, Europol and Icom (its “red list” specifically relates to African art) is very effective as these lists can be consulted on the Internet.
Action - Political pressure and public opinion
Political pressure by bodies such as the Assembly has a part to play. For example interest was attracted by its Resolution 1205 (1999) on the return of holocaust looted cultural property. Though not taken up in international law, it has been welcomed as a political and moral declaration and is frequently cited.
Similar are the appeals that have been made to stem the anticipated trade in antiquities looted from Iraq. In this latter context several countries have indicated that they have taken special measures. The aim is to influence public attitudes to trade in generic articles such as cuneiform tablets from the area.
The European public should also be made more aware of the artistic quality of African cultural heritage. It should also be encouraged to regard this in the same way as Western Art. This is a matter of development education. The North South Centre could be involved.
E. The African side of the story
There is a strong sense of the need to restore equality of dignity to African art, to restore to it a sense of history and not regard it all as sort of folk.
On this is based the policy of promoting shared (African and European) respect for African art as a means of protecting it in African as well as European museums.
If illegal trade in African heritage is to be condemned, the legitimate trade in contemporary African art should be encouraged. This was stressed in the Paris hearing not only by Mr Abdou Diouf, former President of Senegal and Secretary General of the International Organisation of the Francophony, but also by Mrs Chinwe Chukuogo-Roy, contemporary Nigerian artist. This applies to serious contemporary art and to folk art and to the culture industries and tourism in general.
But the situation in African society is itself also very relevant to how the African cultural heritage is regarded. At the Paris hearing the lack of state investment in culture was strongly criticised. There is as yet in the Sub-Saharan region no substantial middle class able and interested to buy art or galleries to sell it. The market is almost exclusively aimed at the foreign tourist – or diplomat.
In situ preservation may be the ideal solution, but it depends on effective local protection. There is a very substantial need for building up an infrastructure for the protection of cultural property. This is especially the case in Sub-Saharan countries. The situation there varies from country to country. Nevertheless there seems to be general agreement on the need for the enactment of appropriate legislation and for its implementation by government administration trained in matters relating to heritage. There is a general need for an inventory (where it has not yet been done) of what art is still in African museums and of known archaeological sites and to check them regularly. There is a need for museums (and effective protection of contents); training museum personnel in protection, conservation and presentation. But the effort should go further into training teachers and providing school education; arranging native tourism and promotion of heritage through local media.
Though it is beyond the remit of the Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Europe, the international bodies such as Unesco, Icomos, Iccrom and Icom are active in this area and their work should be encouraged. The European Union has funded a project for the development of museums in Kenya. Certain bilateral initiatives can be mentioned such as the French support for the Senghor University in Alexandria and its projects in this field for example to train African museum professionals. Similarly the training of conservation specialists by the School for African Heritage (EPA) in Benin on the initiative of Iccrom should be supported and developed further. So too Africom. There is a considerable movement of international solidarity with regard to the African cultural heritage and the Council of Europe should be associated with it.
F. Conclusion
Europeans have discovered the importance and the value of the art of Black Africa.
This fascination for art produced by the various peoples of the Sub-Sahara has however created a new threat for their heritage. It is very tempting to steal or buy at low prices pieces that can be sold on for far more in Europe or the United States.
This pillaging is real and scandalous.
It is done at the expense of poor countries. It often involves corruption.
It is depriving young countries of the pieces that go together to make up their history and their roots.
Europe, with its long and solid links with Africa, has the duty to put an end to this situation.
It should make sure that art objects that have been illegally imported cannot be legally bought by rich amateur collectors or by museums.
It should help African countries to train specialists, archaeologists, art historians, restorers, conservators, teachers in order to develop regional institutions for protection but more especially to develop a rightful pride of Africans towards the art objects that their ancestors have created and from which their artists continue to draw inspiration.
In committing itself to the adoption of measures to put an end to the pillaging of African art, and to the creation, in this field too, of balanced exchanges, the Council of Europe is showing that it recognises the equal dignity of European and African civilisations and that it intends to develop between them a living dialogue, a dialogue between equals.
APPENDIX 1
List of relevant international instruments
COE Delphi 1985 ETS 119 –
Convention on offences relating to cultural property
COE Valletta 1992 Art 10 – European Convention on the protection of the
archaeological heritage (revised)
EU Council Regulation 3911/92 on the export of cultural goods
EU Council Directive 93/7 on the return of cultural objects unlawfully removed
from the territory of a member state
Unesco 1954 (The Hague) - Convention for the protection of cultural property
in the event of armed conflict with protocols (1954 and 1999)
Unesco 1970 – Convention on the means of prohibiting and preventing the
illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property
Unesco 1972 – Convention concerning the protection of the world cultural and
natural heritage
Unesco 1976 (Nairobi) – Recommendation concerning the international exchange
of cultural property
Unesco Intergovernmental Committee for promoting the return of cultural
property to its countries of origin or its restitution in case of illicit
appropriation (first session November 1979)
Unidroit 1995 – Convention on stolen or illegally exported cultural objects
Related texts adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly
Res 808 (1983) on the return
of works of art
Rec 1072 (1988) on the
international protection of cultural property and the circulation of works of
art
Rec 1372 (1998) on the
Unidroit Convention
Res 1205 (1999) on looted
Jewish cultural property
APPENDIX 2
THE PROTECTION OF AFRICAN CULTURAL OBJECTS
Proceedings of the colloquy organised together
with the French Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe, under the patronage of Mr Jacques Chirac, President of the French
Republic
28 March 2003
Senate - Paris
Message from Mr Jacques CHIRAC, President of the French Republic
Opening of the Colloquy by Mr Jacques LEGENDRE, Former Minister, Senator, Chair of the Sub-Committee on Cultural Heritage, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
Address by HE Mr Abdou DIOUF, Former President of the Republic of Senegal, Secretary General of the International Organisation for Francophony (OIF)
FIRST WORKING
SESSION
THE CURRENT SITUATION AND MAIN PROBLEMS
chaired by Mr Luis Maria de PUIG,
Chairman of the
Committee on Culture, Science and Education of the Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe
HE Mr Mahamadou OUEDRAOGO, Minister for Culture, Arts and Tourism of Burkina
Faso
Mr George ABUNGU, Honorary Director of the National Museums of Kenya
Ms Chinwe CHUKUOGO-ROY, Nigerian artist
Mr St�phane MARTIN, Director of the Quai Branly Museum, Paris
Debate
SECOND WORKING
SESSION
THE MAIN ACTORS AND THEIR POINTS OF VIEW
chaired by Baroness HOOPER, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Culture, Science
and Education of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
Mr John MACK, Keeper on Ethnography,
British Museum,
London
Ms Anne-Marie BOUTTIAUX, Keeper on Ethnography, Royal Museum of Central
Africa, Tervuren, Belgium
Mr Jean-Paul CHAZAL, Lawyer and collector
Mr Ga�l de GUICHEN, Iccrom adviser - EPA Fund
Debate
THIRD WORKING
SESSION
SOLUTIONS
Chaired by Mr Eddie O’HARA, Vice-Chair of the Sub-Committee on the Cultural
Heritage
Mr Jacques PEROT, President of the International Council of Museums (Icom)
Mr Lazare ELOUNDOU, Unesco World Heritage Centre
Mr Jacques POINAS, Assistant Director of Criminal Affairs, French Police
Commander Bernard DARTIES, Central Office for Combating the Illegal Art Trade
(OCBC)
Mr Philippe BOCK, Inspector, French Customs Police (DNRED)
Mr Alain GODONOU, Director of the School for African Heritage (EPA, Benin)
Ms Caroline GAULTIER-KURHAN, Director of the Cultural Heritage Management
Department of Senghor University, Alexandria
Mr Jose-Maria BALLESTER, Director of Culture and the Cultural and Natural
Heritage, Council of Europe
Debate and close of the Colloquy by Mr Jacques LEGENDRE
POSTCRIPT
by Mr
Jean-Claude Mignon, Chairman of the French
Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
Message from Mr Jacques CHIRAC, President of the French Republic
This Colloquy enjoyed the patronage of the President of the French Republic, who sent a message to participants which was read out by Mr Jacques LEGENDRE at the opening of the event:
“In the 20th century, after a long period of neglect, African art gradually secured a key place in the collections of the major museum throughout the world.
The aesthetic specificity of African art and the fascination it has exerted on a multitude of Western artists, from the Fauvists to the Cubists, from Apollinaire to Malraux, have left an indelible imprint on the major modern artistic movements and created fresh insights. Shaking off the limits within which it had initially been confined by ethnology and anthropology, African art is now recognised as constituting a category of its own, bearing witness to ancient civilisations and also impacting on our own epoch on the same basis as the Greek sculptors or the Italian Primitives who laid the foundations for the blossoming of European classical art.
This is why I was anxious for the Louvre Museum to open special sections on African art, and for France to finally build the sorely needed major museum on Quai Branly, centring on African arts.
In a complex, chaotic world which depends on intercultural dialogue for its very survival and where globalisation is offering new prospects for development but is also producing new kinds of dangers, Africa must take its rightful place in the campaign to promote cultural diversity.
This requires the African continent to develop the requisite instruments for conserving and enhancing its cultural heritage and protecting it from grasping exploiters.
Cultural objects, as repositories of a fragment of the souls of the nations, must not be reduced to the status of mere commodities. They must be protected from commercial abuse.
This is the significance of the French commitment to cultural diversity, giving its full meaning to today’s colloquy on the protection of African cultural objects. I would voice the sincere hope that your work will bear fruit and lead to a practical plan of action on behalf of the African heritage.”
Opening of proceedings
by Mr Jacques LEGENDRE
Former Minister, Senator, Chair of the Sub-Committee on Cultural Heritage of
the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
“’Flee yonder, flee!’
This was how St�phane Mallarm� expressed the aspiration to “an exotic nature”, before warning us that the traveller is at the mercy of the steamboat and in constant danger of shipwreck…
People often unjustly accuse the West of ignoring non-European cultures, forgetting that up until about a century ago long-distance travel was extremely perilous.
As soon as contact with remote destinations became easier, European artists made the most of it, thrilled at the rich diversity of African sculpture, which they used to renew their own inspiration, from Braque and Derain to Picasso, from the German expressionists to the French surrealists.
At the beginning of the 20th century a vigorous campaign developed to create a museum of African Arts in Paris. In fact, it was no coincidence that Nazi barbarism placed the same scandalous opprobrium on modern European art and African sculpture.
All art-lovers now know the debt owed by contemporary creation to the knowledge of masterpieces fashioned within civilisations which had long been protected by their very inaccessibility.
The risk is not ignorance, if indeed it ever was, but market fads and the pressures they can exert on materially destitute societies.
This latter risk is the central issue.
I am also concerned about the vulnerability resulting from the uprooting of the ancestral heritage, or worse still, from its sometimes forced abandonment.
The international conventions, particularly the Unidroit Convention, have at least clarified the conditions for lawful trade in such objects and enabled those States which have been the victims of fraudulent exportation to secure the assistance of the international community in protecting their heritage.
The Council of Europe’s Sub-Committee on the Cultural Heritage is also responsible for offering the 44 member States[1] a satisfactory means of reconciling the interests of collectors and of the institutions responsible for heritage protection.
I align myself with those who are pleased to see these masterpieces being offered a worthy setting that fully respects their cultures of origin, for instance in the new museum designed by Jean Nouvel and commissioned by President Jacques Chirac, which is currently being built in the heart of Paris.
This will provide a high-profile consecration of the equality of dignity among the various forms of creation, with the illustrious portrait of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci in the Louvre and, on the opposite bank of the Seine, the hieratic beauty of an Ibo mask.
Equality of dignity of works of art, but also, and this is the obvious corollary, equality of dignity among all human beings, beginning with the creators, but also embracing the specialists. I am especially pleased to welcome the representatives of Senghor University, curators from various African museums and the Director of the School for African Heritage.
These specialists have the key task of training the technicians and scientists responsible for providing material and cultural protection for this heritage by deepening our as yet fragmentary knowledge. The African elites must resume control of the study of their own artists and reintegrate the full dimensions of their creations.
I am also glad that we have finally transcended the rivalry between the aesthetic and anthropological approaches. Respect for the irreducible mystery of African sculptures might even lead us to reconsider European works of art, which, prior to their status as “colours assembled in a certain order on a plane surface”, to quote Maurice Denis, were also acts of thanksgiving aimed at praising creation, speaking of the dread of mortality or celebrating the sweetness of life.
Delacroix borrowed two subjects from Dante in order to decorate the library of the Palace in which we find ourselves today. The fascination exerted by these paintings resides not only in their ease of execution and the beauty of the landscapes and figures they portray, but also, and above all, in the force of their subtly communicated message: the artist’s sovereignty vis-�-vis all authority, and the immortality of the works of the human spirit.
So you can see the extent of my ambition, which is to protect African cultural objects, obviously by regulating the trade in such items and restoring their rightful status, but also by inducing both sides to learn through study of the contacts among the different civilisations.
The Council of Europe, as a defender of the values of democracy and a dogged promoter of balanced intercultural dialogue, is honoured to be able to contribute to this debate, to alert the international community to the issues involved, to send out recommendations and, above all, to act.
At a time of tragic conflict in Iraq, I would forcefully reaffirm my abhorrence of glib theories about a war of civilisations and my profound belief in mutually beneficial exchanges.
I think that here I am speaking for all my colleagues from the parliaments of member States of the Council of Europe and, I hope, for all present here today.
I would thank you in advance for your contributions, which will fuel the discussions in the Sub-Committee on the Cultural Heritage, especially with a view to the report which I will be submitting to it before the public debate in Strasbourg.”
Address by His Excellency Mr
Abdou DIOUF
Former President of Senegal, Secretary General of the International
Organisation for Francophony (OIF)
“The protection of African cultural objects, which is your chosen theme for this Colloquy, lies at the crossroads of some of the major questions prioritised by “Francophony”, the French-speaking world.
The Francophone project is an overall vision of the world and its organisation, whose rules are based on values which we regard as universal and mutually inseparable: democracy, peace, cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue, aimed at sustainable, solidarity-based development.
I think that this Colloquy can help us to link up some of the fields and sectors of activity which are usually, wrongly, treated in isolation from each other in discussion of the political strategies we wish to implement globally in order to implement these values.
I am thinking, for example, of the link between heritage and sustainable development, between the economy and culture.
After all, how can we speak of sustainable development when the vestiges of a shared history constituting the identity of a people are vanishing under the onslaught of time, wind and weather, or criminal activities? The younger generations in Africa, thus deprived of part of their collective memory, will unfortunately never be able to pass on to their children that which has been handed down to them.
Again, how can we speak of heritage when famine and poverty, as well as lack of education, are leading to the destruction of natural sites, soils and biotopes, and also the unlawful sale and plundering of cultural objects?
Your three working sessions will be attended by many contributors who will, far better than I ever could, scrutinise all the problems arising in the heritage field in Africa. I would just like to remind you of the various efforts expended by “Francophony” in this area and make a number of modest comments.
The international conception of the heritage has found its legal expression in various conventions that have been drawn up since the immediate post-war period. After historic buildings, monuments and cultural objects, this conception has gradually come to incorporate natural sites and, more recently, the oral and intangible heritage, which includes languages, literature, rites, customs, and so on (although this list has attracted some controversy). There is no need to stress the importance which we attach to this latter dimension.
“Francophony” is making its contribution by fighting for linguistic diversity on a global scale and endeavouring to maintain and defend the French language and the native tongues of its member countries.
The Conference of Ministers of Francophone Culture held in Cotonou in 2001 reiterated this message by appealing to the various States to protect the heritage and its diversity.
The efforts of the Intergovernmental Agency to digitalise those items of the oral heritage which have already been recorded are aimed at the same goal.
This conservation issue is obviously linked to the whole area of museography. I would simply remind you here of the major role played by Senghor University in Alexandria. The Director of this institution’s Department of Cultural Heritage Management will presently be describing its activities in detail, and may explain the progress made thanks to the heritage information highways.
These multi-faceted programmes endeavour to remedy all the relevant problems, which are currently well-documented. Evidence of this was provided by the conclusions of the Round Table of Ministers of Culture from 110 different countries convened by Unesco in Istanbul last September. These conclusions tally perfectly with the Resolution adopted by our Francophone Parliamentary Assembly at its 27th Session in July 2001, confirmed and clarified by a subsequent recommendation at the latest Francophone Summit in Beirut.
All these texts stress the need to encourage States to sign and ratify the international legal instruments on protection of the heritage and prevention of thefts and trafficking.
I personally wholeheartedly back these recommendations, and would invite any member States and governments of the IOF which have not yet done so to accede to the Convention on the Protection of the World Heritage adopted by Unesco in 1972, which has been ratified by 172 States, and the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which was adopted in 1970 and has so far attracted 97 ratifications.
I would also like to see more French-speaking countries joining the Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in Case of Illicit Appropriation, which was set up in 1980 and now represents 22 different States.
The issue of restitution, which is often presented in rather controversial terms, should be treated rationally, as recommended in the Resolution on Return or Restitution of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin, adopted by the UN in December 2002 (A/RES/56/97). The law must prevail - and the Unidroit Convention, adopted in 1995, very felicitously extends its scope to the private sector, although it is unfortunate that only 18 countries have ratified it - but co-operation, partnership and shared responsible are also key concepts in this regard.
I also note that at its last session this month the Intergovernmental Committee reported on a number of disputes that were well on their way to a friendly settlement, quoting the example of the Axoum obelisk which Italy is about to return to Ethiopia. In other cases an agreement has been included, as for instance the Nok and Sokoto sculptures, of which Nigeria will retain ownership but which will, for the moment, be displayed in the permanent collections of the future Quai Branly museum in Paris.
If we are to combat trafficking in cultural objects effectively we need a complete inventory. There is also unanimity on this point, and we heartily welcome the progress facilitated by the School for African Heritage (EPA) in Benin, which has been endeavouring to promote such an inventory since 1998 with the help of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (Iccrom).
I would therefore also urge all our member States to initiate this vital work of inventorying their cultural objects. Nevertheless, I would recommend giving some thought to the indexing standard to be used, which should take account of local characteristics and comply with a plurilingual approach.
The EPA is also playing a vital role, sometimes alongside Senghor University, in training professionals and rethinking the museological conceptions of African art forms. By advocating the setting up of “open museums”, “agora museums”, “mirrors of yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s African cultures”, the EPA is lining up with anthropologists such as Maurice Godelier, who, in his plans for the future French museum on Quai Branly, wants to install a separate area alongside the art exhibition rooms devoted to the interpretation of the cultural objects.
Interpretation is being emphasised in this way because the educational dimension should not be overlooked, as was so aptly pointed out at the Marrakech meeting organised in December 2002 by Senghor University in co-operation with our Human Rights and Democracy Delegation and the APF. I even think that reappropriation by the populations in question, particularly the younger generation, of their cultural heritage also involves introducing them to their cultural and social environment through the museums of Africa.
Having recently attended the Assembly General of French Teachers in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa, I am more convinced than ever of the importance of native languages in this connection. For instance, I can just imagine the interest and enthusiasm that would be aroused in young people by addressing this subject from the angle of an unbreakable, living bond between the past, the history of our ancestors and our modern world.
I have said a great deal about the heritage, and the list of presentations to be given here today would seem to indicate that this will be your main concern. Yet cultural property is also the fruit of contemporary creation, guaranteeing tomorrow’s heritage and constituting a frequently overlooked precondition for part of the African countries’ prosperity.
This is why I must take this opportunity, in conclusion, to stress the importance of the cultural industries.
I shall mention but one example. Can it be said that the countries of Africa derive the full benefit, in terms of tourism revenue, from their natural and cultural potential?
Again, what would be left of cultural diversity if African musicians, writers, actors, choreographers or fashion designers were unable to create and circulate their productions? But above all, how can they ever hope to enrich global culture alongside their colleagues from Europe, the Arab world, Asia or America if their creations are governed solely by commercial rules?
This explains the immense importance of the draft Convention on cultural diversity being prepared by Unesco.
Thank you for your very kind attention.”
FIRST
WORKING SESSION – The current situation and main problems
chaired by Mr Lluis Maria de Puig, Chair of the Committee on Culture, Science
and Education of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
The CHAIR stressed the tireless efforts expended by Senator Legendre to promote cultural diversity, and thanked the French Senate for it hospitality.
Current events worldwide could be considered as a cultural setback. Political dialogue and mutual understanding between human beings and civilisations could make a great contribution to peace and prevent the clashes of which the war in Iraq, alas, carried the seed.
The Council of Europe and its Committee on Culture had thought in depth about the importance of culture in international relations. Identity was made up purely and simply of cultural identity, the heritage and art. Where there was creation there was also identity, which had to be respected.
The Council had long been working to protect cultural assets and combat trafficking, since certain works of art were not marketable because they belonged to a given identity, territory, and community. They could not be considered as goods. Europeans were responsible for what was happening in Africa today, which was why the Council of Europe had tackled the problem and was intending to continue dealing with it. What were the risks facing the African heritage? How was it to be protected? What effective action could be taken against thefts and trafficking? The Colloquy would endeavour to answer all these questions.
His excellency Mr Mahamadou OUEDRAOGO, Minister for Culture, the Arts and Tourism of Burkina Faso, passed on to President Diouf the compliments of his President, Mr Compaor�, for his personal qualities and his action as President of the OIF, and thanked Senator Legendre for this opportunity of discussing the protection of the African heritage.
Ancient societies had always produced objects charged with symbolism. In those communities that had remained closest to their traditions, in Africa, America and Oceania, these objects had, until recently, lacked any monetary value; they had represented a force, a power capable of influencing individual or communal destinies. In the Western world, aesthetics and artistic quality had gradually taken over from the sacred or ritual aspect. With the progress in navigation from the 15th century onwards, Europeans set out to discover the world, and came back from the continents they had visited with more and more works of art, given that works of art had always circulated following post-warfare plundering and exchanges of gifts.
The arrival of the European had led to a clash of civilisations and of artistic conceptions. In Africa, America and Asia the function of the work of art was primarily spiritual and religious; being sacred, it belonged to no one and could not be sold. With systematic plundering, the peoples of these continents had been dispossessed of important ritual and sacred objects. Plundering had intensified during the colonial period in order to satisfy the European predilection for exotica. Soldiers, colonial officials, civilians and researchers used their powers and privileges to perpetuate the plundering process. The objects wrested from the indigenous communities had ceased to be sacred because they had been removed from their original context. Many of them had arrived in Europe without any indication of their origin, function or creator.
Major collections of works of art of all sizes and uses had swiftly grown up outside Africa, both for private individuals, who became wealthy as a result, and for museums specialising in so-called “Negro” or “primitive” art - the Mus�e de l’Homme in Paris, the British Museum in London or the Mus�e Royal in Tervuren, Belgium. The independence of most of the African States in the 1960s had not put an end to the illegal trafficking, which, on the contrary, had expanded toward other outlets thanks to the profits accruing.
The Africans who consciously or unwittingly aided and abetted this trafficking came from all kinds of backgrounds. The professional players were maverick “antique dealers” operating in the larger towns and cities, who received orders for works of art and then travelled the length and breadth of the country in search of them. They used local networks, mainly consisting of unemployed young people from families to which sacred objects had been entrusted, whom they bribed with small sums of money. Worse still, some museum officials, lured by the easy money, were also involved in this kind of trafficking.
There were also informal operators, ie persons who occasionally contributed to art trafficking: members of families possessing the objects or individuals or public figures giving heritage items to foreign friends or business partners as presents.
The primary non-African traffickers were collectors and private museum operators who placed orders in situ unrestrained by any moral considerations; it should also be noted that some “adventurers” were in the habit of donning archaeologists’ hats to excavate various African sites, and then exporting their finds regardless of the (obviously imperfect) national legislation and international law.
Genuine ancient and/or sacred works of art, whether ritual masks, religious statuettes or figurines, sculptures or traditional attributes of power, were the objects most highly treasured by traffickers.
There had been three famous cases of thefts in Burkina Faso in recent years: the Kurumba Mamio fertility statuette, which had finally come to light in Germany after transiting through the Netherlands and whose restitution had prompted a four-day celebration; the Pog-Neree mask from Tigundamba, which had also been traced by Interpol; and the Bobo butterfly mask, which was still missing. The most serious current problem was the clandestine excavation, which was rife in many ethnic groups. Veritable plundering networks had been organised with the connivance of certain native populations.
To steal a cultural object is to destroy a soul. We must therefore devise strategies to combat this trafficking, with its devastating moral and social consequences. Unesco, Iccrom, Icom, various NGOs and many international conferences had already sounded the alarm and issued the requisite recommendations. It was vital to upgrade the legislation and step up the powers of the authorities responsible for implementing it; to promote improved co-operation with Interpol; to formulate information, education and research policies in order to alert the populations and decision-makers concerned to the importance of the cultural heritage; to inventory, document and strictly manage the cultural heritage; and lastly, to step up control of the circulation of cultural objects.
Burkina Faso had ratified the three main international instruments aimed at combating trafficking in cultural objects, viz the Hague, Unesco and Unidroit Conventions. However, the international regulations had to be applied more strictly if they were to be fully effective. It was necessary for the European Union, the Council of Europe and all the supranational organisations to pull their weight. Culture was the substratum of development. Without it, the world was heading towards an inhuman and dehumanising form of globalisation. (Applause)
Mr George ABUNGU, Honorary Director of the National Museums of Kenya, sincerely thanked the colloquy organisers.
He pointed out that Africa was very important in cultural terms, and that it could be justly proud of its diversity, from the pyramids of Egypt to the bronzes of Benin, through the artistic productions of the western kingdoms and the priceless manuscripts of the Ethiopian churches. Africa had had its part to play in all the major global cultural movements. Many artists had been influenced by their African colleagues.
However, this extremely diverse heritage was currently under threat, archaeological sites were being plundered or destroyed and many objects were being exported in breach of the international conventions. Political instability was one of the factors in this problem, as were insecurity, war, the pressures of the Western art market and the excessive openness of national borders.
So what was the situation of African museums? Many of them had been founded during the colonial period to serve narrow interests and aims; today they had become living platforms for dialogue and exchange, representing the national identities. Conservation of the heritage was now recognised as their main mission, involving collecting, interpreting, exhibiting - and transmitting. It would be easier to found the future if the past was not forgotten.
However, there were many threats, including the plundering of sites and archives, thefts from the museum exhibition rooms, and smuggling. The primary reasons for these phenomena were insecurity and war, which were exploited by the traffickers: there were very many examples of this phenomenon, from Somalia to former Zaire, and no one could say that the same causes in C�te d’Ivoire and Liberia would not produce the same effects. The second reason was insufficient State resources. While African countries had an extremely busy agenda, for example building roads and schools and combating poverty and AIDS, they were prone to forgot that culture was the bedrock of the nation, founding the people’s identity and enabling them to live together; in fact, African cultural policies were either unsatisfactory or completely non-existent. Such policies very often lacked the legal framework for their proper development, and a continent-wide effort in this direction was urgently needed. Another factor that encouraged trafficking was the inadequate implementation of legislation by the governmental authorities responsible for law enforcement and the lack of satisfactory education and training for the corresponding officials. This was, of course, compounded by the further problem of corruption.
Mr Abungu noted that some progress had nonetheless been made, particularly in reinforcing legislation. However, it was also important for communities on the African continent to reappropriate their heritage, which should be perceived as a lasting resource benefiting everyone. This was why museums had to stay as close as possible to the population.
The speaker went on to mention the Programme for Museum Development, the vital role played by the EPA in training African professionals and museographers, the Iccrom red list and the inventory activities. He advocated adopting more intergovernmental agreements on the model of those concluded by Mali and the United States or by Niger and France. He quoted the example of the European Union’s support for the restructuring of museums in Kenya. He strongly urged the museums to improve their co-operation with the police and Interpol. He said that a 2001 publication on illegal trafficking in artefacts had highlighted the importance of reinforcing criminal legislation in the objects’ countries of origin, the need for training professionals and informing and education local populations, the deterrent value of severe sentencing of intermediaries, and above all the effort to raise the awareness of institutional and private collectors, who should refrain from purchasing objects unless they could ascertain their origin.
As centres for heritage conservation and irreplaceable forums for dialogue, museums had an essential role to play in combating trafficking in works of art. However, if they were to fulfil this mission they needed the support of the governments and the appropriate legislation. (Applause)
Ms Chinwe CHUKUOPO-ROY, painter (Nigeria), thanked the organisers of the Colloquy for this opportunity to speak.
Art had always had a very high status in Africa. The arrival of the Europeans and Christianity had led to the destruction of many sacred works, because they were pagan, and the export of many others.
The speaker welcomed the extreme vitality and diversity of contemporary creation in Africa. Africans were buying more and more works of art, but the lack of a middle class was weighing heavily on the market; artists were having to fall back on their wealthier fellow-citizens or businesses. They often had difficulties exhibiting their works because of the lack of galleries and the poor organisation of the art market; European financing was frequently insufficient to establish the requisite basic infrastructures. Furthermore, “tourist” objects bought in Africa were often resold as works of art in Europe. The stereotype of “primitive” or “tribal” African art was deeply ingrained, and such items were commonly exhibited in ethnographic museums - including contemporary art! Western societies seemed convinced that African art was not worth presenting in museums of art: they rejected it, only to acclaim it as soon as it inspired any European artists! The speaker considered that there was no such thing as second-class art.
This also applied to private galleries, which often had a discriminatory attitude; African artists living in Europe found it difficult to exhibit and sell their work because it was catalogued as na�ve or tribal. Some gallery owners did not even look at the artist’s portfolio: the colour of his or her skin was enough for them to refuse…
The African States did not spend much on culture or on training professionals, but, after a long latency period, Africans were beginning to recognise and reappropriate their heritage. Education played a fundamental role in this development, especially since the arts scene was bubbling over with diversity and creativity in all the countries of the continent. Artists had to be able to work, to rely on networks and to express themselves wherever possible in order to express the proliferation of their creations. (Applause)
The CHAIR thanked Ms Chukuogo-Roy for her extremely useful contribution to the discussions. It was true that stereotypes were deeply ingrained and that contemporary African creation was worthy of interest per se.
Mr St�phane MARTIN, Director of the Quai Branly Museum, Paris, agreed with Ms Chinwe Chukuogo-Roy that the dimension of contemporary creation, creation, and the living arts was essential. He stressed that in the experience of the institution which he directed, there was no precedent for a cultural heritage being preserved without support from outside the social group that had originated this heritage. No heritage protection policy that was confined to the social group of origin, eg entrusting the conservation of Breton churches exclusively to Breton Catholics, could ever succeed.
The African cultural heritage was widely underestimated, especially when it was considered exclusively from the angle of its influence on certain European artistic movements in the 20th century. African art was not just a source of inspiration for Picasso! It was the expression of a spiritual and aesthetic phenomenon which did not boil down to “Negro” or “primitive” art. People spoke of “primitive art” or the “primal arts”, but these terms were inadequate and merely conventional, because they usually took account solely of the influence of African and Oceanian sculpture on Western creators; while the Quai Branly Museum would be exhibiting these “primal arts”, it would have a much wider scope, a more comprehensive approach, endeavouring to be as faithful as possible to African history, to its place in the human adventure, because Africa had been robbed of its history. Europeans, French people knew that their history was structured by dates serving as reference points, chronological milestones, such as, in France, 1515 or 1789. Styles were designated “Louis XV” or “Louis XVI”. Africa had been deprived of this historical depth, which had been replaced with a “timeless” approach, the illusion of a smooth, uneventful temporality. The truth of the matter was that the African continent had undergone major changes and that its rich history was currently being rediscovered, which was also a means of reconquering its cultural heritage.
We ought therefore to begin by restoring the place of African history - in all its dimensions - within the human adventure. This should invalidate any purely defensive and national strategy that disregarded foreign museums and their capacity for intercultural dialogue. However, a museum was a strange place which incorporated objects that had not been created for that environment. The museum was a place that took in uprooted objects, and in a sense there was something artificial about it. It had the task of putting these artistic and social testimonies back into context. Yet this was not specific to an African art museum; after all, a fashion and costume museum exhibiting dresses worn by Jacqueline Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe changed the function of these garments. The ambiguity was just as marked in such cases.
Nevertheless, museums were forums for dialogue. There had been a rather peculiar development in this field: for some fifteen years a kind of infatuation had grown up with museums, which were no longer the dusty, deserted places they had formerly been; they were now prestigious centres, albeit primarily devoted to celebrating local or national culture. This was no doubt an attempt to pay tribute to cultures that had been humiliated, but what of the museum’s primordial function of providing a forum for dialogue? The first museums inaugurated in England, the Netherlands and Italy had, after all, been designed as substitutes for travel, endeavouring to give an impression of the Other. If the museum could contribute to reinforcing self-esteem, it was also, and this was essential, an instrument for knowledge of the Other and for sharing.
A policy of defending such a culture as that of Africa involved multiple networks in Africa itself but also in foreign public institutions and private collections. The best way to protect such a heritage was to ensure a shared respect for it. (Applause)
The CHAIR thanked Mr St�phane Martin for his interesting affective and intellectual approach to the role of the museum.
SECOND
WORKING SESSION – The main actors and their points of view
chaired by Baroness Hooper, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Culture, Science
and Education of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
The CHAIR noted that the first working session had been an opportunity for setting out the general and legal framework of a problem with which she was personally acquainted as a member of the Governing Board of a major national collection in Liverpool which maintained relations with Western Africa. The questions that had been put were exactly those that had to be tackled. As representative of the United Kingdom, the Baroness took the liberty of pointing out that her country had recently ratified the 1970 Unesco Convention, and that MPs were pressurising Government to ratify the Unidroit Convention. Before holding a general discussion on this matter, it would be useful to listen to the field workers, namely the museum curators, gallery owners and collectors.
Professor John MACK, Keeper on Ethnography at the British Museum, London, said that he would like to outline the British Museum’s policy on illegal trafficking in cultural objects, covering its legal and political aspects and its external, African dimension.
The British Museum had adopted a policy framework, which had been approved by its governors and was well-known to all staff, to cover all the collections in its possession - African art, and also antiquities and ethnographic and contemporary collections. This policy framework was regularly reconsidered to take account of new situations arising. The policy implemented by the Royal Academy since 1995 had been a turning-point in this respect. The reference framework was now public and was used to guide staff practice.
Where purchases and loans were concerned, as Baroness Hooper well knew, the reference text dated back to 1996, and the Museum was working on a new version. The Unesco text had provided a sound starting point, together with the 1970 Convention and the code of ethics, complemented with the United Kingdom museums’ code on illegal exports and excavations. This policy was aimed at ensuring that objects were purchased exclusively within a legal framework: the seller had to produce proof of ownership. The Museum deplored the plundering of sites, which was impoverishing the world heritage, and turned down all offers of illegally exported objects. It refused to accept gifts of or to purchase any object whose seller or donator was unable to prove that he or she had acquired and exported it legally. However, it was for the Museum Board to decide on a case-by-case basis on objects which might otherwise have been destroyed, and also on minor antiquities on whose provenance no documentary evidence was available. Curators retained some discretion in deciding on such matters. It should be added that the Museum also took account of the material and non-material interests of third persons in this area.
Professor Mack said that these were very restrictive conditions, preventing the Museum from purchasing objects recently excavated in certain regions. However, this policy was being followed by other organisations raising funds for national collections: they disbursed money only on the aforementioned conditions.
The same conditions applied to loans. The British Museum did not lend objects for an exhibition where any country had stated that the exhibits in question had been unlawfully excavated or illegally exported, and refused to accept suspect objects on loan. After the 1995 dispute with the Royal Academy the suspicious objects from Mali had been discarded.
Professor Mack pointed out that his Museum was nevertheless working and co-operating with Africa. It organised excavations in Egypt, Sudan and Maghreb with the full co-operation of the national and local authorities, and no problems had so far arisen in this context. In sub-Saharan Africa, the work was conducted in co-operation with the national museums, the requisite prior authorisations having been obtained. For instance, Professor Mack had worked with the competent authorities in Madagascar, enriching both their own and the Museum’s collections. Sound mutual relations were maintained with the African institutions.
Professor Mack concluding by emphasising the many interesting points raised by the draft recommendation. (Applause)
The CHAIR thanked Professor John Mack for his contribution, which would probably prompt a number of questions.
Ms Anne-Marie BOUTTIAUX, Curator, Ethnographic Division, Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, said that museum staff should adopt a firm attitude to the illegal traffic in African cultural objects, and stressed that her own institution strove to apply a strict policy on this front. The Tervuren Museum was, it had to be said, a former colonial museum which had previously adopted a very different approach to acquiring its exhibits. It was not an art museum but a scientific research institution and had major collections relevant to natural and human sciences. The Ethnographic Division had some 200 000 objects, including masterpieces of African art and less important objects which it endeavoured to exhibit in their cultural context. After all, the mere fact of hanging a mask on a wall deprived it of 90% of its significance.
The collections had mainly been built up during the Belgian colonial period by soldiers, missionaries and colonial administrators; the objects had not been considered as works of art but as curious, exotic items used as a foil to and as propaganda for the Belgian “civilising mission”, so that impressive volumes of objects had accumulated. These items had then required classification and inventorying, a procedure which had ignored their context, given that the curators had never set foot in the countries of origin.
The objects had come from a variety of sources: some had been part of the spoils taken during “pacification” expeditions, some confiscated by soldiers, or by missionaries trying to combat animism, some had been exchanged for various universal exhibitions, others had been received as gifts or, less commonly, been purchased; and all this had been done with complete disregard for the original purposes of the objects. “Natives” had sometimes even been exhibited in what were usually called human zoos. At one of these universal exhibitions in Tervuren in 1897, seven Congolese had died from severe weather conditions.
In 1976, 114 objects had been returned to Congo, which had achieved independence under the new name of Zaire, and co-operation had been established with other institutions in the country with a view to “controlled collections”. Ms Anne-Marie Bouttiaux considered that this had been a useful approach, even though some of the returned objects had subsequently been stolen.
For some time the Ethnographic Division had purchased objects regardless of any code of ethics, but in 1990 a new policy had been introduced aimed at organising major temporary exhibitions and promoting field research. Forthcoming exhibitions would be based on the results of this research, and objects would be exhibited in their context, using physical and visual materials based on authentic local evidence.
Furthermore, the Division had drawn up a code of ethics based on the Icom’s recommendations on transactions: it now only bought replaceable objects or, failing that, commissioned copies of irreplaceable objecs from local artists, because the Division was less concerned about historic “authenticity” than the Divisions dealing with the fine arts and architecture would be. Moreover, prior to any sale of religious objects, the locals removed their sacred status by means of sacrifices and ceremonies, and care was taken to ensure that the financial transactions did not infringe any taboos liable to have harmful consequences for the sellers.
The Division thus continued to increase its collections in agreement with the national museums, ensuring that export certificates had been duly issued, even though such documents, being easy to forge, did not provide any absolute guarantees. Such purchases were intended to supply further information and fill in gaps in specified ethnographic fields, but the Division refused to purchase illegally excavated objects. For instance, it had no Nok terracotta objects, despite the large numbers of such items on the Belgian market. In fact, some French museums had purchased such objects and then applied to Nigeria for permission ex post facto. The Tervuren Ethnographic Division had decided not even to follow this example lest it should encourage clandestine excavations.
Legacies and donations, which were no longer common, were usually accepted; worthless objects were now channelled into the educational departments, and items of dubious origin were rejected. The new Museum directors had realised the urgency of the issue, and was to set up a Committee on purchasing policy. This body might also deal with purchases by such other Divisions as the geology and zoology departments, which also gave rise to occasional problems. An Ethical Board had already been set up to deal with conflicts of interest, attempting to introduce regulations on crafts items on sale in the Museum shops. Not all the problems had been solved, but the Museum was heading in the right direction.
Ms Anne-Marie Bouttiaux pointed out that while co-operation with Congo was continuing, the work with C�te d’Ivoire was going through a difficult phase because of the war in the country: a number of theses on the Baoul� and Guro ethnic groups had been placed on hold. She personally had taken part in “collections” for the Abidjan museum, and dealt with the training and “awareness-raising” of local staff. However, it was difficult to combat corruption because of the very low salaries of African museum professionals, although she had no wish to lecture anyone. The Division was currently working on a planned exhibition with curators from Kinshasa. This approach ensured collection security because it enabled all the objects to be identified and indexed. (Applause)
The CHAIR stressed the importance of good practices.
Mr Jean-Paul CHAZAL, lawyer and collector, joked that having been invited to speak in a twofold capacity as a lawyer and a “collector”, he hoped that owning up to this latter activity would not lead to his immediate conviction.
“Protection of African cultural objects”. What protection? Of what heritage?
Mr Chazal asked first of all what role could be played by persons like himself, referred to as “collectors”, who could not resist the urge to possess such objects.
The main qualities of such persons, far from the clich�s and preconceived ideas imposed on them (snobs, speculators, abettors of organised crime arranging break-ins, and so on), were their sincerity and high standards.
Their ambition was to understand and know themselves through the creative phenomena of different cultures. They found transitional objects in traditional African art which enabled them to make good certain ontogenetic absences: ancestors, the symbiotic relationship with the mother, etcetera. Africa gave collectors the nostalgic feeling of a culture which had exalted these primordial relationships, enabling them to fulfil their dreams of exogamy and transform their relations with nature and the animal world. They found roots and spiritual peace in this continent and its art.
To collectors, what was normally referred to as an “object” became a “subject” into which they transferred themselves, as part of a stable, deep relationship. They drew energy and joy from the constant wonder of such art.
They understood, from the inside, how a sculpture could be considered as the incarnation of the ancestors.
These masks and statues, which had forfeited their sacred status on leaving their place of creation, lived on in a different context. They invariably prompted awe and admiration. They were the ideal antidote to xenophobia and racism.
Lovers of exotic art discovered the Human Being through what we now referred to as “cultural objects”.
To such people art was universal, without frontiers. Collectors saw this process as loving Africa rather than “plundering” it.
The concept of “cultural object” was surprising to collectors because it seemed so remote from their living perception of African cultures. These cultures struck a vivid chord with them, which dispensed them from any need for an academic or official designation.
Collectors provided a vital contribution to the material and permanent protection of the African heritage by making it a close companion.
No major exhibition had ever been organised without collectors agreeing to lend particular items for display; and no museum in the world had never received legacies and donations from these private “keepers”.
When collectors died, the objects which they had chosen and cherished lived on with a different initiatory function in other private or public universes.
The lives of such collectors had not been the expression of any neurotic, cultural egocentricity. They could never have existed without a relationship to the Other, without sharing. And this world, which had initially been alien to them, had managed to restore their human universality, if only intuitively.
However, this activity obviously needed a legal framework.
At the global level, an international convention, the Unidroit Convention, had been devised and signed in Rome on 24 June 1995. This text provided for the return or restitution of cultural objects, and allowed States to take direct action against individuals.
So what heritage were we trying to protect?
If the aim was to secure the return of stolen property or to protect archaeological sites, no one could dispute the legitimacy of such goals.
However, Chapter II of the Unidroit Convention on the return of stolen or illegally excavated objects could not be implemented without taking account of a number of facts:
- the Convention provided for consultation by the potential purchaser of a register of stolen objects. The problem was that no such centralised register or file, access to which also had to be free of charge (as it constituted a public service), had yet been forthcoming;
- as for illegal excavations, which obviously destroyed any possibility of scientific study of the site, they were usually organised by a large number of people and known to all and sundry, and could therefore not really be described as “clandestine”.
Was there any need to mention the discrepancies and contradictions in the policies conducted by some States? The speaker mentioned just one such State, which was particularly concerned by this phenomenon: its governmental authorities were expressing their satisfaction at an exhibition of terracotta objects that had been illegally excavated. These authorities had even gone so far as to write the preface to the catalogue for this event, which was being held in a European capital, while at the same time the government of this same country claimed to be combating what it called the violation of its soil and its history.
These preface writers thought (and wrote) that these sculptures, whatever the circumstances surrounding their provenance and circulation, would remain eminent ambassadors for their country.
A solution to this cacophony might be to provide these countries with the resources for conducting a genuine cultural policy, carrying out scientific explorations of their soil, conducting the necessary archaeological work and exhibiting the results of their labours in their national and regional museums.
What was anyone to think if the more privileged countries failed to back up their protestations with the financial resources likely to make them credible?
Would not these countries be simply attempting to ease their consciences, to dispel some kind of guilt feeling, a deformed heritage from a monotheistic religion, which like all its sisters big and small had never gone out of its way to preserve African traditions. To a prosperous State, ratifying such an international convention was little more than a cheap courtesy gesture.
At all events, while it was possible to accept the provisions of Chapter II of the Unidroit Convention aimed at combating trafficking based on thefts and illegal excavations, the same could not be said of the provisions of Chapter III.
These provisions allowed a given State to demand the return of an object which had been sold by its lawful owner and then illegally exported, provided that this object was of “significant cultural importance” to this State. This criterion was much too general and vague.
Furthermore, such action could be exercised “within a period of 50 years from the date of exportation”. This was an extremely long period of time, and its starting date was vague: how could anyone know the exact date when an object had been unlawfully exported?
During the debate in the French National Assembly on 29 January 2002 following the first reading of the Law ratifying the Unidroit Convention, the Deputies had been far from reaching a consensus on the latter text. In the first place, one of the major parties (the RPR) had abstained, and all the Deputies, of all political hues, who had approved the ratification of the text had done so “with reservations”.
The Deputies (particularly the Socialists) had criticised “the vagueness, ambiguity, subjectivity and open-endedness” of the words “significant cultural importance”, the length of the limitation period and the consequent insecurity surrounding transactions and ownership of movable items.
This was why the representative of the then French Government had undertaken not to proceed with ratification before the Senate until a domestic law had been adopted to address the Deputies’ concerns.
Following all these comments, Mr Jean-Paul Chazal expressed his doubts about possible interpretation because Unidroit prohibited any reservations, and because an international convention always took precedence over a domestic law.
What was more, such a convention was liable to be counterproductive, for the following reasons:
It did not require States to adopt legislation to guarantee the operation of a lawful market, or to maintain and draw up export authorisation certificates, even though it was common knowledge that the certificates currently in use were extremely vague.
Despite the evident fact that each nation’s heritage also included that of all the others, an individual State had the completely retrograde option of prohibiting the departure from its territory of any work of art (in the broadest possible meaning of the term), thus establishing a veritable prohibitionist system in the field of circulation of cultural objects, with the inevitable side-effect of creating or encouraging a black market in such items.
Power interests were exerting pressure for the restitution of objects for purely political reasons, without any real intention of protecting specific cultural heritages.
There had already been specific instances of such procedural abuses. The speaker wondered what our reaction should be.
An international convention could only be conceived of between countries sharing one specific conception of the heritage and a real desire to preserve it. It would be better to conclude bi- or multilateral conventions confined to a small number of countries, ensuring that the materially disadvantaged countries had the resources to implement an effective policy on the ground.
We ought to follow the example of the European Union, which proclaimed the principle of freedom of circulation of wealth and thus guaranteed the free market, while providing for exceptions in the case of circulation of extremely important cultural objects regarded as national treasures.
So Chapter III of the Unidroit Convention was an inappropriate response to the problem.
This Convention had so far aroused little interest among the major European countries, and only Italy, Spain and Portugal had ratified it. The deeper one went into the provisions of Chapter III the clearer their disadvantages became. And many countries had come down clearly against it (the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, and so on).
Mr Jean-Paul Chazal concluded by saying that he was still unsure as to the ideal means of protecting humanity’s cultural heritage, particularly in Africa. Such protection could not be ensured by prohibitions or “red lists”, but had to involve enabling Africans to rediscover their roots, just as Europeans had to discover their ancestral cultures and the need to protect them.
He warned against passing fads, certain contemporary analyses of the sense of history and the “obviousness” of various ethical systems.
Going through the session titles on the Colloquy programme, Mr Chazal concluded his statement by stressing that the solutions announced by the Colloquy programme would not lack points of view, and that the point of view which he has just presented under this heading did not totally lack solutions! (Applause)
The CHAIR said that Mr Chazal’s contribution was bound to prompt some interesting discussions.
Mr Ga�l de GUICHEN, Iccrom adviser - EPA Fund, said that he would be confining his comments to African “cultural objects” actually in Africa, namely the archaeological sites, buildings, palaces, mosques, items of colonial architecture, and movable objects - especially in museums. He stressed the fact that protecting such objects necessarily involved training various professionals. In Europe, such training embraced a four- to seven-year university course, whereas in Africa, since the heritage had been controlled by Europeans during the colonial era, no African professionals had been trained. When the African countries had gained independence, the populations and governments had simply had to try and cope. A distinction should be drawn here between the Portuguese and British versions of colonisation on the one hand, and the French approach on the other: Great Britain had bequeathed a museum system based on a fairly broad approach embracing the natural heritage, whereas French-speaking colonialism had only left a series of ethnographical museums, with relatively few employees. That type of structure had provided no interesting career prospects for employees: the directors of the Kenyan museums had employed 950 persons, as compared with a maximum of 50 staff per museum in Mali. Although national collections had existed, they had embraced a limited number of objects: a maximum of 15 000 exhibits in Dakar as compared with 250 000 in the Mus�e de l’Homme and 200 000 in Tervuren. Staff had been under-trained and under-motivated, and museum quality had plummeted.
Unesco had realised the need to react by training professionals, and had begun by setting up a bilingual centre at Jos in Nigeria, which had operated for ten years with international assistance. However, when this aid had dried up, no attempts had been made to identify alternative sources of funding. French-speaking member countries had asked Unesco to relaunch the Niamey Centre, where an exemplary museum had been in operation in the 1950s. However, when the manna had stopped falling the Centre had closed. That had been the situation in 1985. Where could staff have secured training? In Europe, no doubt, in Russia, under work experience arrangements, which had only provided a little additional training, whereas in fact the staff in question had not even received the requisite theoretical training, so that such practical experience had sometimes been worse than useless. In 1995 the profession had sounded the alarm regarding the increasing numbers of clandestine excavations and plundered collections, as well as insect depredation of wooden and fabric objects. Just to give some idea of the extent of the damage, one museum holding 8 000 items had lost 1 500 of them to insect devastation; another museum with 5 200 exhibits had lost two-thirds of them within ten years. The heritage was disappearing, and those items that had survived were not the top assets, because if insects did not differentiate, thieves knew exactly what they were doing.
The international response had been to instigate four programmes, all administered outside Africa, namely the Iccrom Programme, the PREMA French- and English-speaking programme, Senghor University launched by the International Agency for Francophony, which ran two-year postgraduate courses, and the French- and English-speaking monuments and sites programme, known as Africa 2008, launched by Iccrom and Grenoble University. This training programme was aimed at putting an end to the piecemeal approach by following five criteria: training should be suited to the actual problems, which had not always been the case for the previous project in Niamey, which had run pointless courses in taxidermy, leading to a kind of House of Horrors; teachers had to know the profession from the inside; participants had subsequently to secure the employment for which they had been trained; they were entitled to a recognised professional status; training had to be continuous and regular and should not depend on the random arrival of funding; and lastly, the participants had to be personally monitored, because African museums were small and their staff were isolated. These were the five conditions that should facilitate the proper training of African staff.
The PREMA Programme, which had been launched in 1985, had facilitated the training of French- and English-speaking processionals. 80% of the PREMA teaching staff were currently Africans, as compared with 5% at the outset. The courses varied in length from a fortnight to ten months, and only 5% of the 300 professionals trained so far had dropped out. It should be noted that if training was expensive in Europe, it was even more costly in Africa, namely 20 000 Euros for nine months of courses. This was why the international community, particularly the French-speaking countries, had earmarked € 7 500 000 for this training programme, spread over 15 years, giving a daily total of € 1 500. The programme had been wound up in 2000, when indigenous African programmes had taken over. There was an English-language programme in Mombasa, Kenya, and 26 different Portuguese- and French-speaking countries had taken part in the launch of the School for African Heritage in Benin. Iccrom was supporting these programmes.
Mr Ga�l de Guichen concluded by describing the requisite conditions for protecting the African heritage: the governments had to summon the political will for the task, even if they also had other priorities; the legal framework should be adjusted; international co-operation had to be co-ordinated, because no country was equal to the task on its own, and tailored to the context, because too many museums were coming down with unused televisions and video recorders; lastly, time was of the essence. It was thanks to the latter that a solidarity network had gradually grown up.
It was a matter of common knowledge that the solidity of a chain depended on the solidity of its weakest link. Africans who wanted to get to know their own cultural heritage had to leave their home countries. If we did not expend the requisite efforts Africa would soon be emptied of its substance. (Applause)
The CHAIR agreed with Mr Ga�l de Guichen on the cardinal importance of education and training.
Mr George ABUNGU, in his capacity as Honorary Director of the National Museums of Kenya, thanked the speakers, who had clarified the preconditions for protecting the African heritage. He had been impressed by Mr de Guichen’s statement. He had taken due note of Mr Chazal’s comments: Africa did indeed need collectors, ethnologists, museum directors and curators, and dialogue was important. However, he had taken exception to one point made: he saw no justification for a European violating the tomb of one his ancestors and taking part of its contents away to decorate his apartment, even if the European in question claimed to be in spiritual contact with the ancestral world. Mr Abungu did not wish to engage in polemics, but he found it difficult to justify the removal of the African heritage under dubious circumstances, and there was something shocking about using the law to legitimise illegitimate behaviour. Collectors had to refrain from removing objects from their context, otherwise they would never find common ground with those who were undergoing so much suffering.
The CHAIR said that that this was a very fundamental question.
Mr Alioune FALL, professor of public law in Strasbourg and director of the Bordeaux Research Centre for African Law, agreed with his Kenyan colleague, and said that a great deal of work remained to be done in order to secure mutual comprehension. The African heritage was obviously not being properly protected. Mr Chazal’s words had disturbed him, because he had mingled many different concepts, including ownership rights and the universality of culture. However, the Burkina Faso Minister had well described the suffering of those who had lost a cultural object, and their joy when it was restored to them. What was the collector’s private satisfaction when compared to that? If the international conventions did not work then they had to be changed. But how? Mr Fall also wished to tell Ms Bouttiaux that the very idea of an ethnographic museum had colonial and racist connotations. He felt that ethnographic works should remain in their original environment.
Mr Eddie O’HARA, MP, Vice-Chair of the Council of Europe’s Sub-Committee on the Cultural Heritage, said that he agreed with Mr Abungu, as well as with Mr Martin, who had, in his contribution, stressed the importance of mutual respect and understanding of each individual culture. He understand what Mr Abungu meant when he spoke of the tombs of his ancestors. Ms Bouttiaux had stated that her institution had only agreed to purchase replaceable works. Was anything less replaceable than ancestral tombs?
Mr Jean-Paul CHAZAL wished to clarify his approach in reply to Mr Abungu. His home contained not one single ancestral skull or bone, and he personally had once been shocked to see a complete Peruvian mummy in a gallery. He could never contemplate purchasing any type of mortal remains. He added that a New York museum specialising in the Middle Ages was exhibiting the tomb of a Count of Barcelona, which had been rebuilt stone by stone. This was not the problem: it had to be seen that an African artefact outside Africa was neither a theft nor a scandal. There were impressionist paintings in Leningrad and New York. Any individual culture was invariably universal, it was fashioned from the culture of Others and was also intended for them. Mr Chazal’s admiration for traditional African art was too great for him to allow it to be “frozen” on the spot: it would be absurd to prohibit the export of works of art. He therefore advocated the conclusion of effective conventions, and accordingly criticised Unidroit, which he considered adopted the wrong approach. Every country had its culture, but also had to look elsewhere, and the best way to protect the African heritage was to enable the countries of origin to present and protect a type of art which Mr Chazal himself had once discovered by chance in a gallery: he had stumbled upon a natural art form, more genuine and spontaneous than contemporary art. The items in his possession would one day find their way into a museum, possibly an African one, and he would have played the role of intermediary; far from feeling guilty, he thought that he had played a useful role, especially since he had bought the objects in question in a strictly legal manner.
Ms Anne-Marie BOUTTIAUX did not feel responsible for her country’s and her institution’s past; she did not deny the dubious manner in which some objects from the old colonial holdings had been acquired, a criticism which was also being levelled at the institution in Belgium. However, she had described the policy which was currently in place. She personally had worked with the Abidjan museum and had conscientiously produced the objects which she had wished to take away with her, whereas others merely produced a sum of money to obtain the export certificate, without showing the artefacts in question. We should avoid passing judgment, because the staff involved received very low salaries. Furthermore, the Tervuren museum had returned 114 objects to Congo in order to set an example. Ms Bouttiaux considered that this initiative had been important and commendable. Museums did not follow the same principles as private collectors, and accordingly had different practices. A museum exhibited the objects in their context and only acquired masks, for example, after consulting ritualists. Moreover, it gave precedence to contemporary masks, which were of little interest to the collectors.
Mr Ga�l de GUICHEN understood Mr Chazal’s motivations, but stressed the peculiar nature of the situation in Africa: a Greek child could not see the Victory of Samothrace, but could still discover his or her own culture in Athens; an Egyptian child would never see the Berlin Nefertiti, but could still comprehend the Egyptian civilisation in Cairo. This was not the case in Africa. Museums, where they existed, only contained a few thousand objects, and an estimated 90% of African art was currently outside Africa. African children had to travel abroad to learn about their culture.
Mr John MACK said that the truth was that there were not only colonial collections but also anti-colonial ones, and that the British Museum had obtained just such a collection of high-quality objects dating from the Belgian colonial period. The ownership issue had always been under debate, and it overlapped with that of responsibility for this heritage: the important thing was to establish inter-institutional relations enabling these objects to be exhibited and safeguarded.
Mr Vassilios KONTOGIANNOPOULOS, member of the Greek Delegation to the Council of Europe, said that he would like to ask the British Museum Professor a question concerning a related problem, namely the plundering of one European culture by other European countries: he asked his opinion about the restitution of the Parthenon sculptures to Greece. He added that the Greeks were not seeking the restitution of the Venus de Milo or any other work of that kind, but that they hoped to recover an extremely important part of the universal heritage, as requested by Melina Mercouri.
The CHAIR said that she feared the issue of the return of the Parthenon Marbles would be a rather involved digression…
Mr John MACK said that he could not answer this question, but that it was currently under discussion in the Board of the British Museum, and that a discreet meeting was being held on the subject that week in Unesco.
The CHAIR said that it was time to close this exciting session, and thanked all the participants.
THIRD
WORKING SESSION – Solutions
chaired by Mr Eddie O’Hara, Vice-Chair of the Sub-Committee on the Cultural
Heritage
The CHAIR noted the front line role played by Icom in defining and implementing good practices, and called on its President to speak.
Mr Jacques PEROT, president of the International Council of Museums (Icom), presented the Icom, a non-governmental organisation founded in 1946, which currently had over 17 000 members from 150 different countries, all of whom were museum professionals in charge of preserving and protecting the cultural heritage.
The African heritage was in danger, as that, in fact, of many other countries. The international community had to react on the moral front and in the name of fairness, quite simply in order to impose respect for the nations’ right to the conservation of their heritage and history. The danger came first of all from clandestine excavations, which led to the circulation of works of art that had become irrevocably meaningless and impossible to interpret, cut off as they were from the archaeological sites where they had been unearthed. The secondary danger was the unlawful export of the objects recovered from such excavations or other stolen objects.
If action against such activities was to be effective, it had to be conducted by all countries. Icom, for its part, was active on several fronts, especially that of training in heritage conservation, inventorying, material conservation and collection restoration. This was the significance of the operation which had led to the setting up of Africom, which was now based in Africa. Regular workshops were organised around the continent, and regulations had been drawn up and published. The speaker was pleased that training had become a priority and that more and more organisations were providing it, on the EPA model. He advocated improving co-ordination between such bodies.
The fight against the illegal circulation of works of art involved close co-operation among all the professionals, museum directors, police and customs departments, governments, art dealers, intermediaries and collectors. If each profession were to comply with its own code of ethics the danger would be considerably reduced. Icom had organised meetings worldwide in order to bring together the various players in the fight against trafficking. Where protection of the African heritage in particular was concerned, the Round Table held in Amsterdam in 1997, which had been attended by officials responsible for African and Western collections, had laid the emphasis on those categories of artefacts which were under special threat. This was how the Icom “red list” had been drawn up, including the Nok terracotta items, the If� bronzes, the stone statutes from northern Burkina Faso, the Komaland terracotta items and the Sao bronzes. Both the museums and the private collectors had to face up to their responsibilities: they were called upon to refrain from purchasing such objects, which were disappearing completely from the African continent. Icom had also published a volume entitled “One hundred missing objects in Africa” in order to alert the art dealers. This was no exhaustive list of stolen or missing objects, but an indication of the dangers looming over the heritage in specified regions of the globe and an appeal for the return of objects, some of which had been acquired unthinkingly.
Mr Perot also urged as many countries as possible to ratify and observe the relevant international conventions, whatever their imperfections. He pointed out that Unidroit had no retroactive force and was not directed against the art market, despite the frequent allegations to the contrary. He advocated harmonising European legislation in this area.
Mr Perot observed that Icom was not at all opposed to the circulation of works of art and was not hostile to collectors. The International Council of Museums was highly attached to cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue but was firmly against any free, unregulated circulation of artefacts. He hoped that a rational approach would be adopted taking account of the requirements of heritage conservation, on the model of that outlined that morning by the officials from the British Museum and the Tervuren Museum, which was being followed by many institutions in Europe. Exhibitions, temporary loans and deposits were always possible, as long as they facilitated productive exchanges and did not lead to deadlock.
The speaker noted that museums had a major role to play in the fields of education and consciousness-raising, encouraging societies to become more closely involved in protecting their collective memory and heritage. This protection was rightful, urgent and also necessary. (Applause)
Mr Lazare ELOUNDOU, Unesco World Heritage Centre, speaking on behalf of Unesco Director General Mr Koichiro Matsuura and the Director of the World Heritage Centre Mr Francesco Bandarin, thanked the French Parliamentary Delegation and the Sub-Committee on the Cultural Heritage of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for their interest in the protection of African cultural objects, and for having allowed the Unesco World Heritage Centre to contribute to this major colloquy on protection of African cultural objects.
He went on to reiterate the sincere apologies expressed by Ms Minja YANG, Deputy Director of the World Heritage Centre, for her absence from the colloquy for reasons beyond her control. Nevertheless, she had insisted that the World Heritage Centre should make its contribution to the theme of this meeting in historic the Palais du Luxembourg, in the hope that the Centre’s experience would be of benefit to others.
As everyone knew, the protection of cultural and natural objects worldwide, of assets which were considered as having a special universal value for humankind, was one of the main tasks assigned to the World Heritage Centre. Such protection was currently provided under the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted at the 17th session of the Unesco General Conference in 1972.
This meant that the protection of African cultural objects, many of which were currently under threat, disappearing or had already disappeared, was a major concern for the World Heritage Centre. This was borne out by the numerous schemes launched over the past decade to improve the conditions for the management, conservation, protection and recognition of the African heritage.
In June 1994 the World Heritage Committee, having noted a number of discrepancies in the World Heritage List, had adopted a frame of reference and methodology for implementing the Convention, known as the Global Strategy. This strategy was based on regional and thematic definitions of various heritage categories aimed at making the List more representative of all the world’s regions by encouraging those countries which had not yet ratified the Convention to do so as quickly as possible. It also prompted countries which had already ratified to inventory all the cultural and natural objects in their national territories and to prepare indicative lists, ie inventories of the cultural and natural objects located in their territories, and submit them to the Centre with a view to including them on the World Heritage List. Lastly, the Global Strategy was also aimed at encouraging States Party to the Convention to submit suggestions for inclusion of objects belonging to categories and regions that were underrepresented on the World Heritage List.
This Global Strategy had enabled the Centre to initiate a wide range of activities, and in the case of Africa it had helped Unesco to take better account of African cultural and natural objects by drawing attention to the specificity of the nature-culture-spirituality continuum.
Some examples of activities in Africa were:
- the meetings in Harare, Zimbabwe (1995) and Addis Abeba (1996), when African experts had proposed new types of category capable of improving the representation of Africa on the World Heritage List;
- introduction of a training strategy for African professionals, which had led to the launch of the “Africa 2009” Regional Programme at Abidjan in C�te d’Ivoire (1998). This programme dealt with the conservation and management of the immovable cultural heritage in sub-Saharan Africa, in partnership with the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (Iccrom), the International Centre for the Research and the Application of Earth Construction (CRATerre-EAG) and the African institutions responsible for cultural heritage, including the School for African Heritage (EPA) and the Programme for Museum Development in Africa (PMDA). These professionals were trained in methods for drawing up site management plans, embracing legislative, technical and tourism aspects;
- the meeting of experts in Porto-Novo, Benin, in 1998;
- the thematic meeting on the concept of African cultural landscape at Tiwi in Kenya (1999);
- the meeting on authenticity and integrity in the African context, in Harare (2000);
The positive outcome of this strategy had been that sub-Saharan Africa, which had previously only had 17 cultural sites included on the World Heritage List, now had 28 cultural and joint cultural/natural sites. In order to perpetuate this process of correcting the imbalance, the World Heritage Centre was constantly encouraging African States Party to the Convention to continue to propose objects on their indicative lists for inclusion on the World Heritage List.
By including sites on the World Heritage List the States Party to the Convention undertook to ensure all the requisite conditions for protecting them. Furthermore, they also undertook to submit a periodical report on the state of conservation of listed sites. Such reports constituted a vital factor enabling the World Heritage Committee to assess the state of the sites, including preservation of the specific features on the basis of which they had been listed. The reports also helped the World Heritage Committee to anticipate measures required to solve any conservation problems encountered on the site.
Mr Lazare Eloundou observed that Article 5 of the 1972 Convention not only set out guidelines on the effective protection and conservation of cultural and natural objects, but also stressed their enhancement, which could highlight their potential as fully-fledged vehicles for sustainable development. However, to achieve this the Contracting States had to endeavour, as far as possible, to:
- adopt policies geared to assigning functions to the cultural and natural heritage in the community life of local people;
- adopt administrative, legal and technical measures that incorporated traditional laws and customs, in order to improve the identification, protection, conservation, enhancement and revitalisation of such heritage. It should be noted that of the forty African States which had ratified the Convention, only 23 had submitted indicative lists to the Centre.
The Unesco World Heritage Centre was delighted to see that the developmental role of culture was being strongly backed in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). This African scheme was aimed at laying a solid cultural foundation for development, and, it was to be hoped, sent out a strong signal for the conservation of African cultural objects.
In conclusion, the awareness in Africa of the World Heritage Convention and its implementation had very considerably progressed thanks to the efforts of all the States Party to the Convention. However, six countries had still not ratified the instrument. Nevertheless, the Centre was actively continuing to encourage them to take this step, in order to ensure the optimum conditions for implementing the Convention for the protection of all cultural and natural objects in Africa. (Applause)
Mr Jacques POINAS, Assistant Director for Criminal Affairs, French Police Service, pointed out that the Central Office for Combating the Illegal Art Trade (OCBC) had been set up in 1975, and currently had a staff of 35 police and gendarmerie officers. It was responsible for protecting the French cultural heritage, but also that of other countries. It used a special image-processing software facility, which was currently available to French and other criminal investigation agencies and could also be placed at the disposal of museum professionals in the near future. The computer databank contained photos of missing objects liable to end up in the traffickers’ hands. This meant, of course, that the objects would have to have been identified and photographed before their disappearance…
In order to work effectively the OCBC needed safe, stable, detailed and unchallengeable legal rules, as well as legal officers and civil servants capable of implementing them, in France and abroad, which necessitated specialised training. The OCBC was also taking part in various technical co-operation programmes. (Applause)
Mr Bernard DARTIES, Police Commander, Central Office for Combating the Illegal Art Trade (OCBC) introduced himself as an officer working on the ground, and said that he had been extremely interested in the discussions so far, although he found it unfortunate that no art dealers had spoken, as the trafficking, the illegal trade in such objects always converged on such operators.
Trafficking consisted in injecting objects of illegal origin into a legal trade flow. It was fuelled by thefts from public places or private homes, plundering, clandestine excavations and illegal exports. The OCBC was available to provide assistance to any country, in Europe, Africa or elsewhere; objects inventoried by a museum or an individual could be transmitted to the Office by Interpol or through diplomatic channels, to be inputted into its computer database. France had some outstanding art specialists but few major potential customers for illegal trade; it was primarily a transit country.
The worst problem was clandestine excavation. Plundered objects were, by definition, unlisted. Even if all specialists were capable of recognising an If� or Dogon object, existing international conventions set out few binding regulations and were based on criteria which were difficult to demonstrate - the date of the objects’ arrival in the national territory, for instance. Law enforcement also involved artefact evaluation thresholds, which seriously undermined its effectiveness. The objects in question often passed through complex circuits: they were stolen in one country, purchased by a dealer in another and exported to yet another, etc. It was difficult for customs officers, without any specialised training, to intercept on arrival an object exported by a Malian “antique dealer” under the designation “local craft work”. The States had first of all to introduce checks on departures from their territories - although it should be borne in mind that France was incapable of establishing effective controls even for its own heritage!
Law enforcement had to be effected in the source countries, which involved staff training, appropriate structures and co-operation among all the operators concerned; in the transit countries, such as France, where a precise, reliable legal framework should be applicable (the Unidroit Convention should be revised), and where art dealers should be monitored and object traceability guaranteed; and in the countries of destination, at a time when African artefacts were becoming common consumer items and increasing demand was liable to provide a strong stimulus for supply, and therefore also for fraudulent operations.
The speaker said that he did not wish to pass judgment on collectors or art dealers in general, although it was certain that thanks to trafficking, a minimal investment could generate profits far above and beyond any aesthetic or humanist considerations. It was important to clean up the market and assist the African countries - for example by introducing a tax on profits accruing to intermediaries. (Applause)
Mr Philippe BOCK, inspector, French Customs Police (DNRED), pointed out that cultural objects and works of art were not commodities like any others, and said that one of the duties of Customs Offices was to monitor the movements of such items. The system was based on two mainstays, one of which was European and the other national. French legislation stipulated that no “cultural object”, within the meaning of Community regulations based on criteria of age and value, could circulate without supporting documentation, and could not leave the national territory without authorisation. Paintings were protected from an estimated value of € 150 000 onwards, and all archaeological items were automatically covered, whatever their value. These rules on supporting documents were held to have been contravened even if the person holding the object in question was in legal possession. This flexible, effective mechanism also retained the customs department’s right of inspection. As required by the European Union, freedom of circulation was respected, and the items did not have to be declared; the only obligation was the availability of supporting documents in the event of a check.
Consequently, imports were not prohibited. The Customs had no legal means of intercepting plundered objects. However, all items exiting from France could be checked. African objects classified as cultural assets could circulate only if accompanied by supporting documentation and could not leave the national territory without authorisation. This being the case, co-operation with the source countries facilitated the recovery and return of objects that had been stolen or illegally exported.
This system, which had been created primarily in order to protect French and European heritage items, unfortunately had no equivalent at global level. The current discussions on the Unidroit Convention showed that it required substantial amendments. The objects covered should be better defined and the tools for providing a broad legal basis for confiscations improved. Information should also be better circulated in order to facilitate more accurate identification of the objects being trafficked. The objective was to provide more effective checks on the market without suffocating it.
Legal trade was always accompanied by parallel illegal trafficking. This was why the current passion for African cultural objects necessitated urgent action. (Applause)
Mr Alain GODONOU, Director of the School for African Heritage (EPA), with reference to the theme of the session, said that his institution had no magic solutions to offer. He would like to concentrate on the EPA’s activities.
Since the mid-1980s Iccrom and Unesco had been developing an intensive training programme for African professionals in the field of heritage conservation. The bodies dealing with this programme had been transferred to Africa in 1997 at the request of the Africans themselves: the EPA had therefore been founded in Porto Novo, Benin, to complement the work of Senghor University in Alexandria, which specialised in postgraduate courses.
The EPA had three main assignments: providing undergraduate training for professionals, administrative and technical staff; promoting cultural education; and lastly, supplying services for any communities so requesting. The training programmes targeted technical staff from public and private museums, staff stationed at sites and monuments, and library and archive staff. The EPA provided long courses of study covering two academic years, and shorter courses lasting from one to three months on specific themes. Such shorter courses could be held in any one of the 26 or so French- or Portuguese-speaking participating countries at the request of the trainees or institutions in question. The most commonly run thematic training courses were on documentation and inventory management, an essential means of combating trafficking, reserve management, combating insects and enhancing the heritage. Competent professionals were currently operating in Chad, Burkina Faso, Benin and Angola, to quote but a few of the countries covered.
The EPA was also active in the field of cultural education, primarily targeting African young people, and more specifically the 6-14 age group. The current situation was disastrous: less than 5% of all children had opportunities to take part in heritage events. The EPA was currently working in seven countries, four in West Africa and two in Central Africa. It had studied all the educational programmes implemented in these countries, many of which had contents conducive to introducing heritage aspects. However, the textbooks used often dated back to pre-independence days, and Angolese children had no history books at all! And yet brilliant theses were defended in the universities, although they were not popularised or channelled into the school curricula. This showed just how incomplete the education systems were, not to mention the prejudices, including racial bias, conveyed in the available schoolbooks. The EPA had therefore decided to support African schools generally: it had invited the Pan-African Parents’ Association to help it find new approaches and forwarded the results of its investigations to the national curriculum authorities.
The EPA also aimed its action in the field of cultural education at the numerous communities in Africa, many of which possessed heritage items. For instance, great efforts had been expended recently to reach the Afro-Brazilian community in western Africa. The goal was to help such communities to manage and protect their heritage more effectively, because if trafficking was to be combated they also had to be involved - in Cameroon, for instance, the chieftainship museums were the only operational ones.
Lastly, where services were concerned, Mr Godonou mentioned the planned rehabilitation of the historic centre of Porto Novo in Benin. The EPA, surmising that the officials might not be paying as much attention as they should to heritage matters, had contacted them, taken part in the competitive bidding in co-operation with the Lom� School of Architecture and been awarded the contract. The EPA would be carrying out a three-year series of field studies in the historic centre of Porto Novo. The EPA had also received two further offers, one for the Old Accra Redevelopment in Ghana, through the intermediary of Unesco, and the other to evaluate the rehabilitation needs in the major historical towns in western Africa. Unesco had also asked the school to create a website on Nubia. Lastly, the Benin Government had commissioned a study on the construction of the new Beninese national assembly.
Over the previous six years the EPA’s progress had been almost too rapid. It now had a twenty-strong team and eight technicians, not to mention its back-up staff. Its network of former students was beginning to expand. It occupied a section of the Porto Novo university campus, thanks to the generosity of the State of Benin. However, as an independent institution, the EPA had to secure its own resources. Iccrom had launched the idea of a support fund; given that the School needed about € 100 000 per annum to function, € 2.5 million invested at 4% would be quite sufficient. A campaign had been launched, under the patronage of such public figures as Mr Chirac, Mr Ciampi, Mr Ben Ali, the Director General of Unesco, and Mr Quincy Jones. Nearly € 770 000 000 had so far been collected. The second and the last campaigns would be launched at yearly intervals.
In conclusion, Mr Godonou expressed his great pleasure at having been able to share his experience with the participants at the colloquy. (Applause)
The CHAIR thanked Mr Godonou for his presentation.
Ms Caroline GAULTIER-KURHAN, Director of the Department of Cultural Heritage Management, Senghor University, Alexandria, presented the international French-speaking university working for African development, namely Senghor University, which had been set up in Alexandria in 1990 with the aim of providing complementary training for young African executives, by means of a 22-month postgraduate diploma course. One department of this University was devoted to the heritage as a vehicle for development on a par with health, environment and administration. The University’s action to protect the cultural heritage proceeded at different levels: training, research, public information, and so on. Furthermore, it co-operated with the Intergovernmental Agency for Francophony, Unesco, Unidroit, Iccrom and the School for African Heritage, which ran undergraduate courses, thus making the two institutions complementary.
Training of African heritage professionals was a priority, and the educational programme on offer, instead of imitating the approach in Northern countries, had been tailored to African realities. The aim was to conserve and rehabilitate cultural objects, but also to enhance and disseminate them by learning how to identify partnerships and to communicate. At the end of their courses, all students in the department submitted draft dissertations on the heritage of their respective countries, and the themes of these dissertations were eloquent: “Plundering and illegal trafficking in cultural objects in Africa: towards an educational approach in Niger”, “How to bring the National Costume Museum in C�te d’Ivoire into line with global dynamics”, and “Heritage and communication: prospects for raising the profile of museums in Benin”.
The criteria for admission to Senghor University were very selective: candidates had to be under the age of 36, hold a university degree and have professional experience, which meant that not all heritage professionals could apply. This was why the University had introduced on-line interactive non-diploma courses, which provided a distance learning service. A website was also to be created together with the School for African Heritage, to operate along the same lines.
The University, backed by the Latin Union, also organised a biennial training seminar for all heritage staff in individual countries. In 2002, a seminar had been attended by over 70 professionals in Praia, Cabo Verde, on the theme of collecting, inventorying and protecting the ethnographic heritage and legislation on protection of cultural objects, particularly the frequently neglected underwater heritage. 60 000 sailing boats or warships had been missing since the 16th century, and the number of shipwrecks on the ocean bed was estimated at 3 million. Another seminar was to be held in Dakar, Senegal, in June 2003.
However, the University also conducted other activities relevant to protecting cultural objects, thanks to networks of former students. For instance, in December 1996 it had organised a seminar on development, tourism and protection of the cultural heritage in Cabo Verde and Senegal. The discussions had centred on conservation of underwater cultural objects and a draft international instrument. Unesco, which had been represented at this meeting, had continued the reflections and proposed submitting for ratification, by November 2001, an international convention to protect this heritage against treasure-hunters. Another seminar had been organised in Paris in January 2002 and in Egypt in February 2002, in conjunction with the Parliamentary Assembly of Francophony, on the intangible heritage, entitled “Making the intangible heritage tangible?”. When Confucius had been asked what his first step would be if he came to power, he had replied, “I would restore the meaning of words”. In Africa, people had not only to restore the meaning of words but also to reappropriate the oral heritage, which was the very soul of African culture. This was why the seminar had proposed helping African researchers to work on the ground, among the people, and funding “history centres”. In the wake of the seminar a number of micro-projects had been organised, but depressingly, none of these small projects had attracted funding because they had been considered too cheap to run and therefore lacking in credibility. Quite a few institutions preferred financing high-prestige projects rather than supporting long-term substantive actions.
The University had also been conducting research activities, particularly in the field of heritage law within various legislations in French-, English- and Portuguese-speaking countries, with the paper publication of “Law and Heritage in Africa” in 1999, followed by an updated CD and paper version in September 2002. This publishing activity was not confined to the proceedings of seminars and colloquies: the University had initiated two reference collections co-written by former students who had since taken up positions of responsibility. The “Cultural Heritage” collection comprised, for instance, “The African Cultural Heritage” and “The Moroccan Cultural Heritage”. A volume was subsequently to be devoted to each and every French-speaking African country. A second collection concerned heritage towns and cities in Africa. The first volume, on Gorea, would be published in November 2003, and a volume on Agades, Niger, was scheduled for 2004. These works could potentially help put a stop to vandalism and, generally, help populations to reappropriate their towns. Where the new technologies were concerned, the University was attempting, with the support of the Francophone Fund for Information Highways mentioned by President Abdou Diouf, to set up a network of heritage information highways. The aim was to provide heritage departments with the requisite equipment and train their staff in order to create an on-line national “heritage” website for each country. We should not delude ourselves, however: not all heritage departments could afford to maintain such a network, which was why the University Department was currently rethinking the programme, which should facilitate an inventory of African collections. The University and its associate professors were prioritising this action, and were currently seeking the means of re-energising this project.
This did not alter the fact that a drive to train competent African heritage staff was still the ideal way to guarantee the protection of cultural objects. (Applause)
The CHAIR expressed his satisfaction at the complementarity and co-operation between the School for African Heritage and Senghor University. As Assembly rapporteur on the underwater cultural heritage, he appreciated the concern expressed at the exploitation of African underwater heritage by salvage operators from the north and from the USA.
Mr Jose-Maria BALLESTER, Director of Culture and of the Cultural and Natural Heritage, Council of Europe, thanked the colloquy organisers for inviting a representative of the Council of Europe’s intergovernmental sector to join in the discussions, and pointed out that the protection of cultural objects of all kinds was one of the Council of Europe’s broad concerns, alongside Unesco. The cultural heritage belonged to all; all human beings were its owners, addressees and guardians. The solidarity concept was vital here. Another principle was that all heritages, be they cultural, ethnic or religious, had to be preserved, which was no doubt hard to reconcile with current social changes, globalisation, the opening of borders and mobility. And yet the cultural heritage had become a fact of life, and access to this heritage was a matter of social justice because it was now a decisive factor for each individual in defining his or her identity. This led us back to the Council of Europe’s founding principle, which associated human and individual rights with humanity’s collective memory, history and heritage. At the same time, the global rationale of the market imposed constraints, and alongside the spiritual and affective dimension of cultural assets we should not forget the material aspect: cultural objects had their commercial side.
These questions called for political, legal and philosophical responses, otherwise cultural objects would be incorporated into the market via the clandestine, criminal channels of trafficking. The Council of Europe had addressed this issue as part of a co-operation process among its 44 member States, drawing on the European Cultural Convention. The struggle against trafficking required all the players involved - customs and police services, international organisations and churches - to form a common front, a first line of defence against cultural crime, because the action currently lacked co-ordination. This action also presupposed a national and international standard-setting effort, with such results as the Unesco Convention and the Council of Europe’s 1992 Convention. This text, known as the Malta Convention, concerned action against trafficking in cultural objects; Article 10 of the Convention stipulated that the State in which the suspect item had emerged was responsible for investigations. This constituted a step forward because the State of origin had previously held sole responsibility for any police investigations.
A great deal of work was also needed to improve identification of the significance of artefacts, to raise public awareness and replace the items in their symbolic context, taking account of the existence of cultural diversity, the multiplicity of cultures. Religious culture was currently disappearing, a culture which was so important for the understanding and administration of this heritage. Religious objects did have a cultural character but they also had a sacral and anthropological dimension. The fact was that placing a sacred object in a museum made it a cultural object like any other, devoid of this specific dimension. A huge effort was therefore needed in the Western World to improve our knowledge and understanding of the genuine symbolic and spiritual dimensions of African art.
Lastly, to get back to the subject of this Colloquy on illegal trafficking in cultural objects, there was the issue of the national heritage, national treasures. Some people found this concept of a national heritage rather obsolete, archaic, shut off from the outside, but in many countries the concept itself had not yet even been constructed, and this was the ever-topical task in hand. National treasures did exist, but within the framework of universal solidarity, and we should avoid confining ourselves to the viewpoint of countries which already had a “consolidated” history. (Applause)
The CHAIR stressed the need to move on from the old colonial approach that had robbed people of their cultural heritage, and thanked the speakers for their complementary statements, which had suggested some sound, eminently implementable measures. He opened the debate.
Mr Ibrahim LOUTOU, former Minister of Niger, Vice-Chair of the French Association for Artistic Action, backed what Mr Godonou had said, and congratulated him on not merely providing training for museum curators, since they were often powerless against the insects devouring their statues, but, on the contrary, having opened up the School for African Heritage to the living world, to the contemporary artistic creation of which President Abdou Diouf had just been speaking. As an African proverb put it, “A new rope is plaited at the end of the old”.
The African collective memory could only survive if artistic creation remained a living process, so that future generations could also have a heritage with which they could identify. Today’s Africans had to follow the example of prehistoric humanity and create in order to leave a trace of what they were. Contemporary creation would accordingly have to convey a genuine heritage message as to African values, which was a real challenge under the present circumstances.
The young Nigerian artiste Ms Chinwe Chukuogo-Roy had mentioned the difficulties encountered by African artists when they entered the art market with creations solely conveying their own vision. The French Association for Artistic Action was endeavouring to help such artists to overcome these obstacles to circulation of their productions.
How were we to ensure that African artistic creation continued to influence global creation, as it had always done in the past? That was the challenge we had to tackle.
Mr Mohamed OULD KHATTAR, Unesco Cultural Heritage Division, said that he was suspicious of the solutions being proposed, because they had all been tried before and failed. To him, the heritage had no frontiers, and even if Africa seemed distant, bonds of solidarity had been forged with that continent. If humanity were really to protect the African heritage it would be protecting its own heritage, as the common wealth of all. However, this required a great deal of investment, and since Ministers for Culture were often given a mere pittance in terms of funding, this protection and enhancement activity presupposed an immense international effort and support from sponsors. Unfortunately, the considerable efforts expended since the independence of the various African countries had not attained the expected aims, and Africans still got the feeling that museums were foreign institutions. Training and awareness-raising were therefore still the order of the day. In particular, it should be realised that contemporary man was but the guardian and trustee of this heritage. He urged all concerned to pool their efforts and secure an African vision of what this heritage actually was, otherwise the operators would have easy consciences but would still be barking up the wrong tree. Some promising initiatives were fragile: this applied to the schools recently set up with Unesco and Iccrom assistance, which needed the support of all. The main thing was to tailor them to realities on the ground.
Ms Christine DAMIGUET-ARNAL, Technical Adviser, Interdepartmental delegation responsible for social innovation and the social economy, said that she thought the heritage concept should be extended to the craft industry, which required protection against plundering, especially since such plundering damaged the African national economies. In Burkina-Faso, for instance, the craft industry employed 30% of the non-farming population, and accounted for 20% of GNP in west African countries. However, these craft workers’ know-how was being plundered by Asian counterfeits. Furthermore, a western company had attempted to patent artwork executed on corozo media in order to exploit fashionable “ethnic” trends. Current protection procedures were unsuited to the realities of the African crafts world.
The CHAIR said that this was a very important point.
Mr Alain GODONOU told Mr Ibrahim Loutou that the work on practical programmes with the communities was providing very useful results. The action against poverty launched in the most deprived areas under the auspices of Unesco and the World Bank should also help to protect the heritage by rehabilitating it. This would safeguard the interests of the poorest people. The School had successfully launched joint activities with associations of owners of cultural objects, helping them to secure a more positive view of their own heritage.
Where the protection of cultural objects was concerned, it would also be useful if judges and customs and police officers were better trained in estimating the value of artefacts. The School for African Heritage was prepared to disseminate its knowledge and publicise the dissertations prepared by its student past and present.
Ms Chinwe CHUKUOGO-ROY wholeheartedly backed Mr Godonou: training had to be provided for young people who did not know African art, and it would be useful to found a school in Nigeria. However, some third-world countries were completely weighed down by debt, and war was also further exacerbating the situation and bringing the recalcitrants into line. But who was to persuade the banks to invest in the education system? Debt was devouring all before it! Again the concept of an ethnographic museum was questionable. Why were Africans the only people to be analysed in ethnographic terms? Why was there no western ethnography? Care should be taken about perceptions that were being instilled into children!
Mr Ibrahim LOUTOU said that he would like to put a question on the funds required by the School for African Heritage: if the School only received the interest on a certain amount of capital, to whom did this original capital belong? The Minister for Culture and Communication was currently considering reforming the legislation on foundations, and was examining how to improve sponsorship with a mechanism into which sponsors would inject readily available funds over a ten-year period, after which they would recover their money.
Mr Alain GODONOU, as Director of the EPA, had no illusions about the management problems and financial vulnerability of such an undertaking in Africa. Funds were placed under the supervision of Iccrom, which came under the United Nations. The School itself had no access to the capital.
Mr Ga�l de GUICHEN added that the sums of money were made fully available to the School, but that they would be returned to sponsors if the establishment had to close.
Mr Jose-Maria BALLESTER, as Director of Culture at the Council of Europe, subscribed to the various objectives mentioned, such as raising youth awareness, improving knowledge of African art, and establishing clear rules and regulations, but considered that such objectives could not be achieved without political co-operation. Nothing at all could be done without international conventions. Governments and political authorities should therefore continue their dialogue on the heritage, in the broadest possible meaning of the term.
The CHAIR said that he was glad to have been able to preside over this interesting debate, and paid tribute to Senator Legendre: this subject was dear to his heart, and it was he who had taken the initiative of organising this very successful Colloquy.
***Mr Jacques LEGENDRE welcomed all the authoritative opinions given on this matter during the day’s work, and said that he would use these as the basis for a draft recommendation which he intended to submit to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, hopefully by the end of the year. He hoped that the results of this Colloquy would not be useful only to intellectuals and those Africans who were interested in the issue under discussion, and that they would provided the basis for political decisions; he agreed here with what Mr Ballester had just said. The members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, thus informed, should feel heartened to persuade their respective governments to make headway on this issue, because, as Mr Bock had said, it was a matter of great urgency. Similarly, Mr Perot had recalled that the African heritage was in danger. If, God forbid, this heritage were to disappear, it would take with it an immense artistic tradition, and contemporary art would have lost a mainstay on which it had intensively leant in the past. All Africans and Europeans were equally concerned by the fate of African art, and as Mr Ouedraogo rightly pointed out, “a cultural object stolen is a soul destroyed”. The Council of Europe parliamentarians would not be accessories to such thievery, which would make Black Africa the “continent of the lost souls”. Accordingly, it would be criminal to sit back and do nothing, to lack the political will to act, and if the current inequality continued in the long term, “intercultural dialogue” would eventually become meaningless.
This Colloquy had been aimed at bringing people together, without condemning anyone, and if the art dealers had not attended, it had not been for lack of an invitation. While some of them were open to criticism, other were high-quality professionals from whom the sub-committee had learnt a great deal.
The debate had to go on; the Unidroit convention was there to be used, even if it was not always as clear as it should be, and the parliamentarians were entitled to analyse and criticise it. The worst thing, however, would be for a convention to exist but not to be implemented, and for such a situation to open the door to further derelictions, undermining all the goodwill being expressed on all sides. It should not be forgotten that the intensive trafficking in such objects was extremely lucrative, but that it was maintained not by art-lovers but by individuals who cared not a fig for African culture. So let everyone continue his or her work, let Mr Poinas and Mr Darties get on with their job, and let justice be done.
In Mr Legendre’s view, the main message of this colloquy could be summed up in the following way: it was important for each culture to be transmittable in a spirit of mutual respect, devoid of jingoistic hyperbole. By giving the impression of despising the cultures which it plundered, the West was liable to provoke great resentment and tragedy. In order to prevent such a misfortune, cultures had to be allowed to engage in dialogue, to maintain each other, in a spirit of equal dignity for all civilisations. If this colloquy had managed to reflect this will to dialogue it would have achieved something.
Mr Legendre voiced the hope that the Parliamentary Assembly would be able to draw on his forthcoming report in order to adopt an early recommendation to the governments of the whole of Europe, reaffirming the importance of the cultural dimension. (Applause)
I am particularly delighted to have made it possible, at the request of my friend Jacques Legendre, for the French delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to play an active part in this colloquy.
The history of France has made it receptive to all the questions and expectations voiced by Africa and its leaders. The preservation, study and promotion of the African cultural heritage by Africans themselves are objectives which France cannot fail to applaud.
African art, “primitive art” par excellence, deserves to be better known and recognised in Europe. The work of this colloquy has given us an insight into how this objective can best be pursued and achieved. Clearly, as we in Europe see it, the first step is to protect this heritage, like others, against the predatory acts of pillagers and traffickers.
By opening up the debate on the preservation of the African cultural heritage, the organisers of the colloquy have been entirely in keeping with the tradition of exchanges which are the very strength of the Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly. The Council of Europe has made respect for human beings and their rights the cornerstone of its activities: this includes respect for cultures and the treasures they have bequeathed to humanity over the centuries.
My thanks to all participants for making this point so clearly. Thank you to Jacques Legendre for having initiated, on such a fascinating subject, the collaboration which I personally was keen to develop between the Parliamentary Assembly, its committees and the French delegation.
Jean-Claude Mignon
Chairman of the French Delegation
to the Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of
Europe
1.
Parliamentarians, members of the Sub-Committee on the Cultural Heritage
Mr LEGENDRE Jacques Senator, France, Chairman of the Sub-Committee
Mr O'HARA Edward, Deputy, United Kingdom, Vice-Chairman of the Sub-Committee
Mr BACIU Mihai, Deputy,
Romania
Mr HAACK Hermann; Deputy, Germany
Baronne HOOPER, Chambre des Lords, United Kingdom
MR HUSEYNOV Rafael; Deputy, Azerbaijan
Mr KONTOGIANNOPOULOS Vassilios; Deputy, Greece
Mr LIBICKI Marcin; Deputy, Poland
Mr NACHBAR Philippe; Senator, France
Mr PODGORSKI Bodgan; Deputy, Poland
Mr de PUIG Lluis Maria, Deputy, Espagne (Chairman
of the Committee on Culture, Science and Education)
Mr ZVONAR Milos; Deputy,
Netherlands
2. Experts
Mr ABUNGU George; Directeur honoraire des mus�es nationaux du Kenya;
Mr BALLESTER Jos�-Maria ; Directeur de la culture et du patrimoine culturel et
naturel; Conseil de l’Europe
Mr BOCK Philippe ; Enqu�teur � la Direction des enqu�tes douani�res; Minist�re
des Finances (France)
Mrs BOUTTIAUX Anne-Marie ; Conservateur du D�partement ethnographique; Mus�e
Royal de l’Afrique centrale – Tervuren (Belgique)
Me CHAZAL Jean-Paul ; Collectionneur - Avocat;
Mrs CHUKUOGO-ROY Chinwee ;
Artiste nig�riane
Mr DARTIES Bernard ;
Commandant de police ; Direction g�n�rale de la police nationale (France)
S. Exc. Mr DIOUF Abdou ; Secr�taire g�n�ral; Organisation internationale de la
Francophonie
Mr ELOUNDOU Lazare, repr�sentant Mrs Minja Yang ; Sp�cialiste de programme -
Unit� Afrique; Unesco
Mrs GAULTIER-KURHAN Caroline ; Directeur du d�partement gestion du patrimoine
; Universit� Senghor – Alexandrie (�gypte)
Mr GODONOU Alain ; Directeur de l'�cole du Patrimoine africain – Porto Novo
(B�nin); Centre international d’�tudes pour la conservation et la restauration
des biens cultures (Iccrom)
Mr de GUICHEN Ga�l ; Conseiller aupr�s du Directeur g�n�ral; Iccrom – Fonds
EPA
Mr LOUTOU Ibrahim, repr�sentant Mr O. Poivre d'Arvor Vice-pr�sident ;
Association Fran�aise d’action artistique
Mr le Professeur MACK John ; Conservateur en ethnographie; British Museum -
Londres
Mr MARTIN St�phane ; Pr�sident Directeur g�n�ral ; �tablissement public du
Mus�e du Quai Branly
Mr PEROT Jacques ; Conservateur g�n�ral du Patrimoine fran�ais, Pr�sident ;
Conseil international des mus�es (Icom)
Mr POINAS Jacques Sous-directeur des affaires criminelles de la direction
centrale de la police judiciaire; Direction g�n�rale de la police nationale -
France
3. Other
participants
Mr AUGEREAU Fran�ois; Direction des mus�es de France
Mrs BAPT Christine; Collaboratrice de Mr G�rard BAPT, d�put�; Assembl�e
nationale
Mrs BARJOU Marie; �tudiante; IESA
Mrs BOLOT Marie-Charlotte; Charg�e de mission; Association Fran�aise d’action
artistique AFAA
Mrs BOSILONG Pule, repr�sentant S. Exc. Mrs Thuthukile SKWEYIYA; Premier
secr�taire; Ambassade d'Afrique du Sud en France
Mr CADIAS Louis-Philippe; Charg� de mission s�curit� du Patrimoine;
Minist�re de la Culture (France)
Mrs CHTCHEPINE Audrey; �tudiante; IESA
Mr CLERC Robert; Gendarme; Gendarmerie nationale (France)
Mr CONSTANT Fred; Recteur; Universit� Senghor
Mr COUTURIER Christian; Collectionneur;
Mr DAGORN Christophe; �tudiant; IESA
Mrs DAMIGUET-ARNAL Christine; Conseiller technique ; D�l�gation
interminist�rielle � l'�conomie sociale (France)
Mr DAUBERT Michel; Journaliste ;
T�l�rama
Mrs DAUBERT Brigitte;
Attach�e de presse; Mus�e Dapper (Paris)
Mr DELATTRE Lucas; Administrateur; Bureau de Paris Conseil de l'Europe
Mr DENARD Thierry; Gendarme; Gendarmerie nationale
Mrs DIATTA Marie-Ange; Conseiller culturel; Ambassade du S�n�gal
Mrs DIAZ Mich�le; ; RFI
Mrs FAGNART Sylvie; Journaliste ;
L'h�micycle
Mr FALL Aioune-Badara;
Professeur de droit public; Universit� Robert Schuman
Mrs FERRIERE B�n�dicte; Secr�taire g�n�rale adjointe; Assembl�e parlementaire
de la Francophonie
Mrs FRANCOIS Genevi�ve; Premier Conseiller en charge dossier Unesco;
D�l�gation de Wallonie � Bruxelles
Mr GIRARD Patrick; Expert en Art africain;
Mrs HOURS Aur�lie; �tudiante; IESA
Mr KBAKEAO ; Conseiller ; Ambassade du Togo
Mrs KUKAWKA Katia; Universitaire, sp�cialiste d’art africain;
Mr LACROIX Yves; Commandant, Conseiller pr�vention vols et malveillance;
Police nationale /
Direction des mus�es de France
Mr LANIER Lucien; Senator; S�nat fran�ais
Mr MARIN Jean-Yves; Directeur; Mus�e de Normandie
Mr MARRO Patrick; Gendarme; Gendarmerie nationale
Mrs MASSY Laurence; Inspecteur police f�d�rale; Unesco
Mr MOZZICONACCI Jean-Fran�ois; Conservateur en chef des Mus�es de France;
Direction des Mus�es de France
Mr NHAN J�r�me; Charg� de mission; Iccrom
S.EXC. Mr OUEDRAOGO Mahamoudou; Ministre de la Culture, des Arts et du
Tourisme; Burkina Faso
Mr OUEDRAOGO Souleymane; Conseiller culturel; Ambassade Burkina Faso
Mr OULD KHATTAR Mohamed; ; Division du Patrimoine culturel de l'Unesco
Mr PAILLET Jean-Marc; Gendarme; Gendarmerie nationale
Mr PARE Cyriaque; Attach� de presse;
Mrs PEGAZ Laura; �tudiante; IESA
Mr PELLETIER Jacques; Senator; S�nat fran�ais
Mrs PIERRAT Ghislaine; Docteur en communication politique; Mrs RAUX Sophie;
�tudiante; IESA
Mrs RAZAFIMANITRA ; Conseiller affaires douani�res; Ambassade de Madagascar
Mr de ROUX Emmanuel; Journaliste ; Journal Le Monde
Mrs SCHMITT Fran�oise; Directrice; Institut d'�tudes Sup�rieures des Arts (IESA)
Mr SCHMITT Jean-Marie; Directeur; Institut d'�tudes Sup�rieures des Arts (IESA)
S. Exc. Mr SOTOUBERE Tchao;
Ambassadeur; Ambassade du Togo
Mrs TILMAN Julie; Attach�e de
presse aupr�s de Mr Abdou Diouf; Organisation internationale de la
Francophonie (OIF)
Mr VALANTIN Christian; Directeur de Cabinet du Secr�taire g�n�ral ;
Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF)
4. Secretariat
French Senate
Mrs Claire Dossier-Carzou, Adviser
Mrs Sylvie Balcon-Delcroix, Service des Affaires europ�ennes
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe
Mr Christopher Grayson, Head of the Secretariat of the Committee on
Culture, Science and Education
Mrs Anne-Marie Nothis, Administrative assistant
Reporting committee: Committee on Culture, Science and Education
Reference to committee: Doc. 9367 and Reference No 2711 of 26.03.2002
Draft recommendation adopted unanimously by the committee on 19 November 2003
Members of the committee: MM. de Puig (Chairman), Baronne Hooper MM. Prisacaru, Smorawinski (Vice-Persons), Apostoli, Banks (Alternate: Lord Russell-Johnston), Barbieri, Mrs Bemelmans-Vidal (Alternate: Dees), Berceanu (Alternate: Baciu), Braga, Buzatu, Mrs Castro, MM. Chaklein (Alternate: Korobeynikov), Colombier, MM. Cubreacov, Dacic, Dalgaard, Mrs Damanaki, Mr Debono Grech, Mrs Delvaux-Stehres, Mr Devinski, Mrs Domingues, Mrs Dromberg, Mrs Eymer, Mrs Fehr, Mrs Fern�ndez-Capel, MM. Gadzinowski, Galchenko, Galoyan, Gentil, Mrs Glovacki-Bernardi, MM. Goutry, G�nd�z I, G�nd�z S, Gunnarsson, Mrs Hadziahmetovic, MM. Hegyi, Henry, Howlin (Alternate: Mooney), Huseynov R, Iannuzzi, Jakic, Jakovljev, Jarab, Jurgens, Mrs Katseli, Mr Kocharian, Mrs Labucka, MM. Legendre, Lengagne, Letzgus, Libicki, Livaneli, Mrs Lucyga, MM. Lydeka (Alternate: Mincevic), Malgieri, Marxer, McNamara, Mrs Melandri, MM. Melnikov, Mestan, Mezihorak, Mrs Milotinova, Mrs Muttonen, Mr O’Hara, Mrs Ohlsson, MM. Podeschi, Rakhansky (Alternate: Kosyanenko), Mrs Reps, MM. Rockenbauer, Rybak, Mrs Samoilovska-Cvetanova, MM. Schneider (Alternate: Nachbar), Shybko, Sizopoulos, Mrs Skarb�vik, MM. Sudarenkov, Tusek, Vakilov , Mrs Westerlund Panke, MM. Wodarg, ZZ (Andorra), ZZ (Georgia).
N.B. The names of those present at the meeting are printed in italics
Head of secretariat: Mr Grayson
Secretaries to the committee: Mr Ary, Mrs Theophilova-Permaul
[1] Since the accession of the Union of the States of Serbia and Montenegro on 3 April 2003, the Council of Europe now has 45 full members.