DiKE The Liability for Attacks against Immovable Cultural Objects in International Criminal Law

• Short text:

This work examines the role of international criminal law in targeted attacks on cultural property within and outside of armed conflict, and identifies gaps in individual criminal liability that remain to be addressed.

• Long text:

The study aims to highlight the gaps in criminal accountability for the protection of cultural property, which raises the question of why the same offence is considered a crime under international law when there is an armed conflict, but not when there is no such conflict. The destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001 was one of the first indications that attacks on cultural property are not always governed by the law of armed conflict. This incident showed that there is a gap at the international level when it comes to crimes against cultural property in peacetime.