Among bodies, rubble and cities razed to the ground, museums, paintings and statues are also targeted and damaged in the general silence of the wars. Precisely for this reason from 1954 there Convention of the Hague (the first international treaty that aims to protect cultural heritage during war conflicts) has began to affix an international symbol on the sites of historical and artistic interest, it Blue shield (Blue Shield), which identifies them as “Cultural Heritage to be protected “ from conflicts, and which ensures that they are safeguarded by the devastation of the war to preserve the artistic heritage of the civilizations that have made them.
Hit art is a crime against humanity
After the Second World War, after the Second World War, among the ruins of Europe, something became clear: to destroy the art of a people meant to cut its roots. For this reason the Convention of the AIA of 1954the first international treaty designed to protect cultural heritage during conflicts, a historical pact that proposed to create inventories of cultural heritage, put them safe before it was too late, and identify a series of places not to hit with a special emblem, the famous “Blue Shield“(” Blue shield “). The treaty, therefore, certifies that cultural heritage does not belong only to the country in which they are, but are heritage of the entire humanity. When the Sarajevo library ended up in the flames (bombed in 1992 by the Serbian Bosnian army), or when a temple was exploded in Palmira (by ISIS in August 2015), therefore, it was the whole humanity that lost it.
The blue shield works a bit like A red cross for art And, although it has not always been enough to stop the bombs, it represented, and still represents, a visible, concrete commitment towards collective memory.
In Italy, many historic buildings were marked with the blue shield, starting from Florence, where in 2019 symbols on treasures such as the National Library and the Uffizi. To mention other famous historical goods, also The Cathedral of Milan, the Colosseum and the Royal Palace of Caserta have been reported as assets to be protected in case of conflict. Abroad, the blue shield appeared on monuments and archaeological sites threatened by conflicts, such as the Ruins of Palmira in Syria before the destruction by ISIS, or on some historic buildings in Ukraine, including the Cathedral of Santa Sofia in Kiev.
The Treaty clearly sanctions how to destroy or bag these historical or worship assets constitutes a war crime. To strengthen this sentence there is also article 8 of the Rome Statute of 17 July 1998, which regulates the work of the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction to pursue war crimes. Among the most well -known cases of his work, there is the one that happened in 2016, when for the first time a man was condemned to the Hague for destroying mausoleums. It was called Ahmad al-faqi al-mahdi And he was a jihadist of Mali who had razed ancient monuments of Timbuktu to the ground, a city-city of Islamic knowledge. The condemnation was historical: international justice officially recognized that destroying cultural heritage is equivalent to affect the identity and dignity of whole peoples.
Ukraine: the war against memory
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict still in progress hit the cultural heritage, especially Ukrainian. The Council of Europe declared the systematic destruction of churches, museums, theaters by Russian forces is nothing more than an attempt to eliminate the identity of Ukraine very well beyond the geographical boundaries. From February 2022, more than thousand cultural sites have been damaged or completely destroyed. THE’UNESCO He verified at least 450: Orthodox churches with centuries of history, local museums, libraries, monuments, even archives. Some symbols of this devastation have become viral: the Mariupol theaterreduced to powder during the Ukrainian Russian conflict, or 25 paintings of the painter Maria Primachenkosymbol of Ukrainian folklore, burned in the fire of the Ivankiv Museum. They are not only “works”, but real cultural roots, and recovering it means leaving a nation at the mercy of oblivion.
However, not everything is lost, though. UNESCO has put in place a real “cultural resistance”: it analyzes satellite images to map damage, sends materials for the protection of museums, creates international task force. Italy also did its part with the “Blue helmets of culture”, Experts and specialized carabinieri who collaborate with Kiev to secure the works and have committed themselves to the reconstruction of the Mariupol theater.
Because all this concerns us
Losing an archaeological site, a Byzantine dome, a medieval mosaic means breaking an invisible thread that binds us to those who preceded us. That’s why the protection of cultural heritage is not a luxury for intellectuals, but one collective needs. Art, after all, is proof that we are capable of Create beauty Even when everything around it collapses, and it is also the promise not to forget who was on earth before us.
