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Antons, Christoph --- "Intellectual property rights in indigenous cultural heritage: basic concepts and continuing controversies" [2012] ELECD 1169; in Graber, Beat Christoph; Kuprecht, Karolina; Lai, Christine Jessica (eds), "International Trade in Indigenous Cultural Heritage" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012) 144

Book Title: International Trade in Indigenous Cultural Heritage

Editor(s): Graber, Beat Christoph; Kuprecht, Karolina; Lai, Christine Jessica

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857938305

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Intellectual property rights in indigenous cultural heritage: basic concepts and continuing controversies

Author(s): Antons, Christoph

Number of pages: 31

Abstract/Description:

The developments at international level in the debate on what intellectual property (IP) lawyers refer to as traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) have to be seen in the context of the decolonisation movements after the Second World War. Post-war developments saw the formation of the United Nations (UN) and the emphasis on human rights in the UN Charter. With this emphasis came development programmes for indigenous peoples and the recognition of indigenous rights in ILO Convention No. 107 of 1957 Concerning the Protection and Integration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in Independent Countries. The decolonisation movements also initiated or renewed a parallel debate about the repatriation of items of cultural heritage. There was a remarkable shift in this discussion from ‘cultural heritage of mankind’ to cultural particularism and an emphasis on ‘cultural property’, as John Henry Merryman has pointed out with reference to the Preambles of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, on the one hand, and the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property of 1970, on the other hand.