Ten Years Since the Cairo Declaration: A Milestone in the Global Fight Against Cultural Racketeering
May 14, 2025
On May 13–14, 2015, as violent extremism tore through the Middle East and North Africa, ten nations stood together in a powerful act of resistance—not with weapons, but with a shared pledge to protect their history.
The Cairo Declaration, announced during the landmark Cairo Conference on “Cultural Property Under Threat,” marked the first regional action plan of its kind. It committed Egypt and nine other governments to coordinated efforts in combating the looting and destruction of cultural heritage—a tactic weaponized by terrorist groups like ISIS to erase identity and fund violence.
Hosted by the Arab Republic of Egypt and co-sponsored by the Antiquities Coalition, UNESCO, the Middle East Institute, and the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, the conference was attended by ministers, global heritage experts, law enforcement, archaeologists, and scholars.
Key outcomes of the conference included:
- Recognition of heritage destruction as a war crime
- A call for urgent regional and international cooperation
- Support for public awareness campaigns linking antiquities trafficking to terrorism
- Commitment to strengthening legal frameworks for cultural protection
One decade later, the Cairo Declaration’s commitments have served as a roadmap for countries confronting cultural racketeering—spurring policy reforms, community education, and international cooperation. Powerful examples of regional cooperation have endured from the second Culture Under Threat Conference’s 2016 Amman Communiqué to the 2021 Manama Statement of Cooperation between the US and Bahrain, and extended as far as Southeast Asia following Cambodia’s pioneering efforts at the 2022 ASEAN Summit.
As we mark the 10-year anniversary of this pivotal moment, we honor the leadership of those who stood together in 2015—and we reaffirm our shared responsibility to protect the past, for the future.
Read the Cairo Declaration, here.
Revisit insights from the #CultureUnderThreat Task Force, here.