Presenting at United Nations Expert Meeting
May 27, 2016
The Permanent Delegations of Jordan and Italy, together with INTERPOL, UNESCO and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) organize a third and final Expert Meeting of the series on “Protecting Cultural Heritage – an Imperative for Humanity”, held on May 27, 2016 at the United Nations Headquarters. This meeting focused on the situation of trafficking from “source” countries as well as on the broader issue of cultural heritage destruction.
Tess Davis, Executive Director of the Antiquities Coalition, was one of the featured speakers at the United Nations Third Expert Meeting on “Protecting Cultural Heritage – an Imperative for Humanity,” which also included representatives of United Nations Member States, intergovernmental organizations, museums, universities, and other nongovernmental organizations.
Davis urged those present to remember that despite the severity of the danger posed by Daesh (also known as ISIS), the current threat to our world heritage goes far beyond Iraq and Syria, and far beyond the Middle East and North Africa. She urged the Member States present, especially those representing demand countries, to immediately close their border to conflict antiquities, to include cultural heritage in any peacekeeping mandate, and to criminally prosecute crimes against culture along with other atrocity crimes.