International Cultural Property Repatriation Claims of Indigenous Peoples

Abstract

As a response to indigenous peoples’ claims, international human rights law developed a ‘new morality of amending historical injustices’. It opened its scope of application from protecting individual rights to the protection of collective rights of indigenous peoples. While on behalf of individuals there exists no general human ‘right to cultural property’ or even a human ‘right to cultural property repatriation’, the question is whether the new collective human rights law has developed a right of indigenous peoples to repatriation of their cultural property.