UNESCO 1970 and the Hague Convention: The International Law on Cypriot Antiquities

Four international conventions bear on Cypriot antiquities, and Cyprus is a party to all of them. The Hague Convention of 1954 and its First Protocol deal with war and occupation, and are the legal ground for the Republic's claims to objects taken from the occupied north after the Turkish invasion of 1974. The UNESCO Convention of 1970 deals with theft and illicit export in peacetime, and its date has become the working date-line of museums and the trade. The UNIDROIT Convention of 1995 gives owners a private action for return, and the Council of Europe's Nicosia Convention of 2017 makes trafficking a crime. Read together, they protect Cyprus against the losses of the last fifty years: church art cut from its buildings, registered collections emptied after the invasion, objects dug and smuggled since 1970. None of them reaches back. A jug exported from Cyprus with a licence in 1935 or 1965 was lawfully exported then and is lawfully exported now, and no convention can change that. The photograph at the head of this page shows the church of the Panagia Kanakaria at Lythrankomi, in the occupied Karpas, in 2010, after the loss of its apse mosaic (photograph Julez A., CC BY-SA 3.0).

The Hague Convention of 1954 and its First Protocol

The Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict was signed at The Hague on 14 May 1954, together with a separate Protocol, now called the First Protocol [1]. The Convention binds its parties to "prohibit, prevent and, if necessary, put a stop to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of, and any acts of vandalism directed against, cultural property" (Art. 4(3)), and a party "in occupation of the whole or part of the territory of another" must as far as possible support the national authorities of the occupied country in protecting it (Art. 5(1)) [1, p. 244].

The First Protocol is short and concerns movable objects. Its first paragraph is the one that matters for Cyprus: each party "undertakes to prevent the exportation, from a territory occupied by it during an armed conflict, of cultural property" [1, p. 358]. The second obliges every party to take into custody cultural property imported into its territory "either directly or indirectly from any occupied territory"; the third, to return it at the close of hostilities to the authorities of the territory previously occupied, adding that such property "shall never be retained as war reparations"; and the fourth makes the occupying power pay an indemnity to holders in good faith who have to give such property up [1, p. 358].

Cyprus acceded to the Convention and the First Protocol on 9 September 1964, four years after independence; Turkey had ratified both on 15 December 1965 [2; 3, s. I.6]. When Turkish forces occupied the north of the island in 1974, both states were therefore bound by the First Protocol, Turkey as the occupying power and Cyprus as the state whose territory was occupied. Of the main market states, Switzerland had joined in 1962, Germany in 1967 and Greece in 1981; the United Kingdom joined only on 12 September 2017 [2]. Cyprus published the Greek text in its Official Gazette on 15 April 1971 as Law No. 12/1971, but reported to UNESCO that no penal sanctions had been enacted for breaches of the Convention itself [3, s. I.6]. The Republic's report adds that its 1970 UNESCO law and its laws of 2002 on the export and return of cultural goods ensure the application of the 1954 Protocol, which "has been a tool in cases of illicit exportation of cultural property from the occupied area of the Republic" [3, s. I.7].

The weakness of the Protocol is that it is addressed to states. The case that showed this was the four sixteenth-century icons of the apostles from Christ Antiphonitis, found in the Netherlands in 1995. On 4 February 1999 the District Court of Rotterdam accepted that the icons had belonged to the Church of Cyprus until July and August 1974, but held that the Protocol's provisions bound and benefited only the states party to it, and that the Netherlands had never passed the measures needed to apply it in Dutch law; the Church's claim failed, and the Dutch government declined a Cypriot request under the Protocol's third paragraph while the case was pending [16, pp. 342–344]. The Netherlands passed an act giving the Protocol effect in 2007, and the icons came home in 2013. The full case is set out in the Dutch icons.

The case that brought most church art home did not turn on the Protocol at all. The Kanakaria mosaics were removed between 1976 and 1979 and sold in Geneva in 1988, and the Church and the Republic recovered four fragments in the federal court in Indianapolis in 1989 under ordinary property law: Indiana law applied, and under it a thief passes no title, so the buyer's good faith did not matter [17]. The Kanakaria entry gives the judgment in detail. The Munich objects seized in 1997 were likewise recovered by proving ownership, object by object, in the German civil courts (the Munich seizure).

The Second Protocol of 1999

A Second Protocol was adopted at The Hague on 26 March 1999 and entered into force on 9 March 2004. It defines serious violations that parties must make criminal offences (Art. 15), creates a status of enhanced protection for sites of the greatest importance, and, in occupied territory, requires the occupying party to prohibit and prevent any illicit export, removal or transfer of ownership of cultural property and any archaeological excavation not strictly required to safeguard it (Art. 9) [23]. Cyprus ratified on 16 May 2001, having published the Greek text as Law No. 4(III)/2001 on 9 March 2001 [2; 3, s. II.3]. Under that law the Article 15 offences carry up to fifteen years' imprisonment or a fine of up to CY£20,000 (€31,400), and the Article 9 acts up to ten years or CY£15,000 (€23,550), and the Cypriot courts have jurisdiction over Article 15 offences in the cases set out in Article 16 [3, ss. II.3–II.5].

Turkey has not ratified the Second Protocol [2]. Its occupation-territory rules therefore bind the Republic, not the occupying power. In 2005 to 2010 Cyprus told UNESCO that it intended to seek enhanced protection first for its World Heritage sites, the Neolithic settlement at Khirokitia, the Painted Churches in the Troodos and Paphos [3, s. II.2], and in November 2010 they were among the first sites anywhere to be granted it [22].

What the UNESCO Convention of 1970 does

The Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property was adopted in Paris on 14 November 1970 and entered into force on 24 April 1972 [4; 5]. It enters into force for each later party three months after it deposits its instrument (Art. 21) [4, p. 248]. Its main working provisions are these:

• parties are to prevent their museums from acquiring cultural property "illegally exported after entry into force of this Convention, in the States concerned" (Art. 7(a)) [4, p. 240];
• parties are to prohibit the import of cultural property stolen from a museum or "a religious or secular public monument" in another party after the Convention's entry into force for both, "provided that such property is documented as appertaining to the inventory of that institution", and, at the request of the state of origin, to recover and return it, with "just compensation to an innocent purchaser" (Art. 7(b)) [4, p. 240];
• a party whose heritage "is in jeopardy from pillage of archaeological or ethnological materials" may call on the others for concerted measures, including import controls (Art. 9) [4, p. 242].

One article bears directly on the north: "The export and transfer of ownership of cultural property under compulsion arising directly or indirectly from the occupation of a country by a foreign power shall be regarded as illicit" (Art. 11) [4, p. 242].

Cyprus deposited its ratification on 19 October 1979, by Law No. 61/1979 [5; 3, s. I.7], so the Convention has bound it since January 1980. Turkey ratified on 21 April 1981 and Greece on 5 June 1981 [5]. The Convention is not self-executing in most markets: each state decides how to apply it, and that is why the dates on which the market states joined, and the laws they passed, matter more to an owner than the date of the treaty. Cyprus has used it in practice; its report to UNIDROIT in 2012 describes the return from Italy of a hoard of 161 ancient coins illegally exported there, sought under the 1970 Convention through a request for mutual legal assistance in criminal matters [8, s. 3(d)].

What the 1970 Convention does not do

The Convention binds states, not private owners, and it is not retroactive. Every operative obligation in Article 7 runs from the date the Convention entered into force for the states concerned [4, p. 240]. For removals before that date, Article 15 leaves the parties free to make special agreements among themselves on "the restitution of cultural property removed, whatever the reason, from its territory of origin, before the entry into force of this Convention for the States concerned" [4, p. 244]. It permits such agreements; it does not create a claim.

For Cypriot material the practical consequence is large. The great movements of Cypriot antiquities abroad took place long before 1970: the Cesnola and Lang collections of the 1870s, the partage of the British excavations, the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's share in 1931, the Cyprus Museum's own sales and the export licences issued under the 1935 law. The Convention says nothing about any of it. Even between Cyprus and a market state, its obligations began only when both were parties, and for most of the large markets that was decades after 1970:

Dates are those of deposit, from the UNESCO lists of states parties [2; 5]. France ratified the 1970 Convention on 7 January 1997 and the Netherlands accepted it on 17 July 2009 [5].

The United States accepted the Convention after Congress passed the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act in January 1983 [21; 5]. That Act allows import restrictions on designated categories of material at the request of another party, and it is through an agreement under it, first made with Cyprus on 16 July 2002, that the Convention has its sharpest effect on Cypriot objects; the entry on collecting today summarises it. The United Kingdom accepted in 2002 and then passed the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003, which applies only to objects excavated or removed unlawfully after 30 December 2003. Switzerland and Germany passed their own implementing laws after joining.

The timing explains why the Convention played no part in the two great church-art recoveries of the 1980s. The Kanakaria mosaics left the island between 1976 and 1979, before the Convention bound Cyprus, and before it bound the United States, Switzerland or Germany, so the Church had to sue as an owner [17]. When the Menil Foundation was offered the Lysi frescoes in 1983, its lawyer warned of the uncertain state of the law and pointed to the 1970 Convention as part of the reason to approach Cyprus first, rather than as a remedy; the frescoes were bought for the Church, restored in Houston and returned in 2012 (the Lysi frescoes).

How 1970 and 1974 became the working date-lines

The Convention's date acquired a second life outside the law. Museums and the larger salerooms adopted 1970 as the point before which an object's history should be documented, or after which a lawful export must be shown, and the trade now treats the date as a minimum. That is an ethical standard, chosen because the Convention was adopted that year, and it is not a rule of any convention: the treaty's own obligations run from each state's later accession. The arguments over it are set out in the article on UNESCO 1970.

For Cypriot material a second date sits four years later. After the Turkish invasion of July 1974 the Republic lost access to the north's churches, cemeteries, museums and registered collections, and any undocumented Cypriot object could, in principle, have come from there. Buyers, auction houses and the Department of Antiquities therefore ask about 1974 as well as 1970. The reasoning, and the case against applying it to every ordinary pot, are on the 1974 presumption. Neither date marks a change in Cypriot law. Export from the Republic remained lawful under licence until the 1996 amendment; licensed export, 1974 to 1996 shows how that worked. An object with a Cypriot export licence of 1985 left lawfully, though a buyer will want to see the licence.

UNIDROIT 1995 and the Nicosia Convention of 2017

The UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, signed in Rome on 24 June 1995, was written to fill the gap that the Rotterdam court later exposed: it gives the owner of a stolen object, and a state whose export law was broken, a claim that can be brought directly in the courts of another party [6]. It treats an object "unlawfully excavated or lawfully excavated but unlawfully retained" as stolen where that is consistent with the law of the state of excavation (Art. 3(2)), it requires the possessor of a stolen object to return it and allows compensation only to a possessor who exercised due diligence (Arts 3–4), and it applies only to objects stolen or exported after it entered into force for the states concerned (Art. 10) [6].

Cyprus acceded on 2 March 2004, and the Convention entered into force for it on 1 September 2004 [7]. In its answers to UNIDROIT in 2012 the Republic explained that its definition of an antiquity is the one in the Antiquities Law (made in Cyprus before 1850, or before 1940 for ecclesiastical and folk art of great value), that undiscovered antiquities have been state property under the Antiquities Law since 1935, and that it made a declaration on time limits at accession [8, ss. 2, 3(e)–(f)]. It also stated that thefts occur mainly "in the areas occupied by the Turkish troops, which are not under the effective control of the Republic", with 10 thefts recorded in the controlled areas in 2009 and 13 in 2010, and that no claim had yet been brought under the UNIDROIT Convention [8, s. 3(a)–(b)]. The Convention's reach is limited by its membership: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland, which between them hold most of the Cypriot material on the market, have not become parties [6].

The Council of Europe Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Property, CETS No. 221, is known as the Nicosia Convention because it was opened for signature there, at a ministerial meeting hosted by Cyprus, on 19 May 2017 [9; 10; 13]. It is a criminal-law treaty, open to any state, and requires its parties to make offences of theft, unlawful excavation and removal, illegal import and export, illegal acquisition and placing on the market, falsification of documents, and intentional destruction or damage of cultural property [10]. For import, acquisition and placing on the market, the offender must have known of the object's unlawful provenance [11]. The Foreign Minister, Ioannis Kasoulides, said at the launch that the initiative came "because of our experience that we wish these actions don't happen anywhere else again" [13]. Cyprus signed on the opening day [24] and was one of the first two states to ratify; a Council of Europe memorandum of November 2019 records that only Cyprus and Mexico had done so [12]. The Convention entered into force on 1 April 2022, after Hungary deposited the fifth ratification, following Latvia, Greece, Mexico and Cyprus [11]. Like the others, it creates offences only for conduct after it applies.

The resolutions on the occupied north

The international position on the north is set by the United Nations. On 15 November 1983 the Turkish Cypriot authorities declared a separate state in the occupied area. Three days later the Security Council, in Resolution 541 (1983), considered the declaration "legally invalid" and called upon all states "not to recognise any Cypriot state other than the Republic of Cyprus" [14]. The entity it described has been recognised only by Turkey. For cultural property, the Republic's position is that no authority in the occupied area can license the export of an antiquity or pass title to it, and the courts in Indiana and Munich treated the objects before them as the property of the Church or the Republic; the Indiana court refused the Turkish Cypriot administration leave to intervene in the Kanakaria case.

The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly commissioned a report on the cultural heritage of Cyprus from Ymenus van der Werff, published in 1989. It gave the sequence that later accounts follow: "After early opportunist raids during the unsettled period following 1974, more organised looting of selected targets seems to have taken place between 1977 and 1982" [15, p. 131]. The losses it describes were largely church art, and the church art overview sets them out.

The evidence against reading the conventions this way

The reading on this page, that the conventions guard against post-1970 theft and wartime removal and leave old lawful exports alone, has to meet several objections, and the record supports each of them in part.

The first is that an object does not need a convention to be illicit. Since 1 January 1935 the Antiquities Law has vested undiscovered antiquities in the state and required a licence for export [8, ss. 3(e), 4(a)]. An object dug or taken out of Cyprus without a licence in 1950 or 1965 left in breach of Cypriot law on the day it left. The conventions cannot launder it, just as they cannot taint a licensed export. Civil claims of the kind the Church won in Indiana rest on ownership, and they are available whenever the owner can prove its title and is within the time limits.

The second is that lawful export did not mean lawful excavation. Between 1963 and 1973 Greek Cypriot collectors bought antiquities on a large scale with the "silent accord" of the Department of Antiquities, and Karageorghis wrote in a letter printed in 1976 that by the end of registration in December 1973 "more than 1250 people had become collectors" [18, pp. 233–234]. Samuel Hardy, in a study whose method he himself calls "crude", counts 67% of a sample of objects in a pre-conflict public collection as neither excavated nor reported chance finds [19, pp. 459, 466]. Much material that was registered, and later exported with a licence, had been dug illicitly. The conventions do not reach that history, and an honest provenance does not pretend it away.

The third is that the conventions have worked badly when tested. The Kanakaria mosaics were recovered under Indiana property law [17], the Rotterdam court refused to apply the First Protocol [16, p. 343], and Cyprus told UNIDROIT in 2012 that it had brought no claim under the 1995 Convention [8, s. 3(b)]. Much of what came home from the north came through purchase rather than law: in 1997 about $500,000 was raised for the Church's recovery operation, and intermediaries were paid for the frescoes and mosaics they delivered before the Munich seizure [20]. The Church's and the state's payments are set out in the state as buyer. A buyer who believes that "pre-1970" settles every question has misread how these returns happened.

The fourth is that there is money at the top of the market, where a few Cypriot pieces sell for tens or hundreds of thousands, and that is where a convention date matters most. The figures, and the much lower prices of ordinary pottery, are on the economics of looting.

None of these objections turns a lawful export into an illicit one. They show that the conventions are narrow tools, aimed at the losses since 1970 and above all at the north, and that the lawfulness of an older object has to be shown from its own papers.

What the conventions mean for an object on the market today

For a Cypriot antiquity abroad, the conventions sort objects into three groups. Church art from the occupied north, of any date, is claimed by the Church of Cyprus or the Republic whenever it can be identified; the First Protocol, Article 11 of the 1970 Convention and the property law of the market state all point the same way, and such objects are not lawfully on the market. Archaeological objects dug or exported without a licence after 1970, and above all after 1974, are what the 1970 Convention, the American agreement and the European rules are built to stop at the border, and the Department of Antiquities asks for their withdrawal when it finds them for sale (policing and monitoring). Objects that left Cyprus lawfully before 1970, or later under a Cypriot export licence, are untouched by any of the conventions, and most of the Cypriot material in old collections abroad belongs to this group.

The conventions do not decide which group an object is in. Its paperwork does: an export licence, a dated sale catalogue, a museum deaccession record, an old photograph or a family record of when it came out of Cyprus. Market countries add their own import rules, which are the subject of separate pages in this section. An owner, heir or buyer who is unsure where a piece stands, or whether its papers are enough, should contact us: we will look at the object and its history, say what it shows, and suggest what to do next, including selling, keeping or returning it.