G20 calls for keeping watch on auction houses, galleries to curb heritage theft

India leads nations to seek implementation of treaty it hasn't signed.

The G20 nations have called for stepping up global cooperation to fight illicit trafficking of cultural properties, with enhanced monitoring of the international borders and auction houses, galleries, antique dealers, warehouses, free zones and other related businesses.

Though India itself has not yet signed a key 1995 convention on the protection of cultural properties, it led the G20 as its current chair to stress on ratification and implementation of the international treaty.

Ahead of the 18th G20 summit in New Delhi, the culture ministers of the intergovernmental forum’s 19 members and the representative of the European Union recently met in Varanasi and stressed open and inclusive dialogue on the return and restitution of cultural properties.

They took note of the progress made at national, regional or international levels towards resolving issues and enabling the recovery and restitution of cultural properties to their countries and communities of origin, particularly through bilateral dialogues and multilateral mechanisms provided by Unesco and other international organisations.

New Delhi has been focussing on stepping up international cooperation in curbing the smuggling of antiquities after taking over the G20 presidency in December 2022.

The UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects (Rome, 1995) is a key international treaty on cultural property protection. It attempts to strengthen the main weaknesses of the 1970 Unesco Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

India, however, is not a signatory of the UNIDROIT Convention, which seeks to fight the illicit trafficking of cultural property by modifying the buyer's behaviour, obliging her or him to check the legitimacy of purchases. A panel of Parliament of India last month recommended that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in India should explore the possibility of signing the treaty.