ABSTRACT
Deliberate damage of historical monuments and buildings dedicated to art, culture, religion or science was forbidden by the international humanitarian law (or law of armed conflict) and subject to legal proceedings as early as from 1907 when the Hague Regulation IV explicitly prohibited destruction of cultural treasures and religious shrines. In different times of history, protection of cultural property during conflicts was regarded unimportant when compared to military targeting and goals of the warfare. Wars in former Yugoslavia brought in new dimension of armed conflict – historical monuments were deliberately targeted to destroy cultural identity of a nation. This was supposed to lead to ethnic cleansing of a certain area. Further development of international humanitarian law resulted in formation of international criminal tribunals and adoption of their viewpoint that deliberate targeting of cultural heritage constitutes war crimes. The most recently, UN Security Council Resolution 2347 from 2017 condemns unlawful destruction of cultural heritage.
This paper will analyze legal arguments and assessment of used by International Tribunal for former Yugoslavia related to the destruction of cultural heritage as method of ethnic cleansing. It will explore whether awareness of the status of UNESCO World Heritage Site demonstrated perpetrators willingly strived to inflict longer-reaching damage to the nation and whether this should be used as aggravating circumstance. Finally, we will analyze whether destruction of monuments indeed obstructs post-conflict recovery.
