Developments Concerning Immunity from Seizure for Cultural State Property on Loan

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines recent developments supporting a recently emerging rule of customary international law that cultural objects belonging to foreign States and on temporary loan for an exhibition are immune from seizure. It assesses, in particular, the 2004 UN Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property, a declaration on jurisdictional immunities of State-owned cultural property in the Committee of Legal Advisers on Public International Law of the Council of Europe, a Draft Convention by the International Law Association on immunity from suit and seizure for all cultural property on loan, as well as legal developments in the United States, Europe, and Australia. These developments strengthen the existence of the rule of customary international law on immunity from seizure for cultural State property on loan, though they also confirm certain exceptions to that rule, namely that the rule does not extend to those cultural objects which have been the subject of a serious breach of an obligation arising under a peremptory norm of general international law, or which are already subject to return obligations under international or European law.