A RIGHT TO DESTROY? THE LEGAL BOUNDARIES OF CULTURAL MEMORY. An Examination of the Role of the International Community in the Protection of National Heritage Sites against Deliberate Destruction.

Abstract

The dissertation explores the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage under international law. The main thread of theresearch concerns the legal boundaries of cultural memory by examining when a duty to remember cultural heritage can translate into a legal obligation to preserve it - a right to remember- and when, at the same time, there may be a symmetrical legal duty to forget it. In other terms, the dissertation seeks to study not only the “pathological” dimension of destruction but also tracetheborders of destruction by verifying lawful situations in which is possible to recognize “a right to destroy”, b comparing different casesof destruction, or, as the case may be, removal of heritage. Thestudy explores cases of the destruction of heritage in national contexts authorized by domestic governments in light of applicable international norms in both peacetime and wartime contexts. The scope of the research includes mainly examples of tangible cultural heritage (more specifically, public monuments and buildings), which are characterized as contested heritage with accompanying issues of memory and divisive identity narratives. The research will focus on iconoclastic episodes driven by ideological reasons, rooted in three case-studies: Soviet monuments in Ukraine, Confederate iconography in the United States, and the situation of the Rohingya in Myanmar. It will exclude cases of peacetime threats to cultural heritage caused by economic development. The study seeks to enrich the interdisciplinary literature on memory and heritage studies in connection with law