Our Background

As early as the 2nd century BC, we know that authors were criticizing the wartime plundering of art. And, in more recent times, many laws and treaties have been written to protect and preserve cultural property. For instance, the Lieber Code of 1863, commissioned during the Civil War by President Abraham Lincoln, was the first legislation to explicitly call for the protection of cultural property during times of armed conflict. And, in 1954, The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in Times of Armed Conflict and its First Protocol were adopted after a meeting of representatives of the United Nations, under the auspices of UNESCO.