ABSTRACT
The major threats to cultural heritage come in the twin forms of destruction during military conflict and looting of sites and collections. The subject of cultural property protection was separated into its own distinct convention, the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property during Armed Conflict. The 1970 UNESCO Convention has steadily received ratification by market nations over the past almost twenty years, in sharp contrast to the first twenty years of its existence. While international conventions are almost universally non-retroactive, this feature of the 1970 Convention seems particularly problematic to the countries of origin because the Convention does not assist these nations in recovering cultural objects that were removed during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, often as the result of colonialism. However, have expressed increasing dissatisfaction with the 1970 UNESCO Convention in its current form.
