As tensions escalate in the Middle East, US President Donald Trump has threatened to strike targets in Iran should they seek to retaliate over the killing of Qassem Soleimani. According to the president’s tweet, these sites includes those that are ‘important to Iran and Iranian culture’.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper was quick on Monday to rule out any such action and acknowledged that the US would ‘follow the laws of armed conflict’. But Trump has not since commented further on the matter.

Any move to target Iranian cultural heritage could constitute a breach of the international laws protecting cultural property. Attacks on cultural sites are deemed unlawful under two United Nations conventions; the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property during Armed Conflict, and the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.

These have established deliberate attacks on cultural heritage (when not militarily necessary) as a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in recognition of the irreparable damage that the loss of cultural heritage can have locally, regionally and globally.

These conventions were established in the aftermath of the Second World War, in reaction to the legacy of the massive destruction of cultural property that took place, including the intense bombing of cities, and systematic plunder of artworks across Europe. The conventions recognize that damage to the cultural property of any people means ‘damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind’. The intention of these is to establish a new norm whereby protecting culture and history – that includes cultural and historical property – is as important as safeguarding people.

Such historical sites are important not simply as a matter of buildings and statues, but rather for their symbolic significance in a people’s history and identity. Destroying cultural artefacts is a direct attack on the identity of the population that values them, erasing their memories and historical legacy. Following the heavy bombing of Dresden during the Second World War, one resident summed up the psychological impact of such destruction in observing that ‘you expect people to die, but you don’t expect the buildings to die’.

Targeting sites of cultural significance isn’t just an act of intimidation during conflict. It can also have a lasting effect far beyond the cessation of violence, hampering post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction, where ruins or the absence of previously significant cultural monuments act as a lasting physical reminder of hostilities.

For example, during the Bosnian War in the 1990s, the Old Bridge in Mostar represented a symbol of centuries of shared cultural heritage and peaceful co-existence between the Serbian and Croat communities. The bridge’s destruction in 1993 at the height of the civil war and the temporary cable bridge which took its place acted as a lasting reminder of the bitter hostilities, prompting its reconstruction a decade later as a mark of the reunification of the ethnically divided town.

More recently, the destruction of cultural property has been a feature of terrorist organizations, such as the Taliban’s demolition of the 1,700-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001, eliciting international condemnation. Similarly, in Iraq in 2014 following ISIS’s seizure of the city of Mosul, the terrorist group set about systematically destroying a number of cultural sites, including the Great Mosque of al-Nuri with its leaning minaret, which had stood since 1172. And in Syria, the ancient city of Palmyra was destroyed by ISIS in 2015, who attacked its archaeological sites with bulldozers and explosives.

Such violations go beyond destruction: they include the looting of archaeological sites and trafficking of cultural objects, which are used to finance terrorist activities, which are also prohibited under the 1954 Hague Convention.

As a war crime, the destruction of cultural property has been successfully prosecuted in the International Criminal Court, which sentenced Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi to nine years in jail in 2016 for his part in the destruction of the Timbuktu mausoleums in Mali. Mahdi led members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to destroy mausoleums and monuments of cultural and religious importance in Timbuktu, irreversibly erasing what the chief prosecutor described as ‘the embodiment of Malian history captured in tangible form from an era long gone’.

Targeting cultural property is prohibited under customary international humanitarian law, not only by the Hague Convention. But the Convention sets out detailed regulations for protection of such property, and it has taken some states a lot of time to provide for these.

Although the UK was an original signatory to the 1954 Hague Convention, it did not ratify it until 2017, introducing into law the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Act 2017, and setting up the Cultural Protection Fund to safeguard heritage of international importance threatened by conflict in countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

Ostensibly, the UK’s delay in ratifying the convention lay in concerns over the definition of key terms and adequate criminal sanctions, which were addressed in the Second Protocol in 1999. However, changing social attitudes towards the plunder of antiquities, and an alarming increase in the use of cultural destruction as a weapon of war by extremist groups to eliminate cultures that do not align with their own ideology, eventually compelled the UK to act.

In the US, it is notoriously difficult to get the necessary majority for the approval of any treaty in the Senate; for the Hague Convention, approval was achieved in 2008, following which the US ratified the Convention in 2009.

Destroying the buildings and monuments which form the common heritage of humanity is to wipe out the physical record of who we are. People are people within a place, and they draw meaning about who they are from their surroundings. Religious buildings, historical sites, works of art, monuments and historic artefacts all tell the story of who we are and how we got here. We have a responsibility to protect them.

Internet shutdowns in Asia have become frequent and persistent, an ominous sign of shrinking public space for debate and discourse. The shutdowns have become an irresistible option for governments of all stripes and ideological affiliations. Democratic India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines are prodigious offenders. So are Asia’s more repressive regimes, notably China.

In their defence, governments have offered real and imagined threats to national security as reasons for shutting down the pipes. It is useful to examine these claims as well as to objectively frame the issue. Are internet shutdowns in Asia legitimate and can be defended and explained as threats to national security? Or should we take a broader approach where international law, norms, values, rights and indeed economic stability could be invoked to curb this invidious practice?

Let’s start with the shutdown in Kashmir, where Indian authorities clamped down on internet access for a straight 165 days, described by rights group Access Now as the ‘longest shutdown ever in a democracy’. The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates that the shutdown had huge economic costs, estimated at over £1.9 billion.

The economic cost of the continuing surveillance and shutdown in China’s Xinjiang province is likely to be higher. But India is a democracy and could be a role model, which is why the recent assertion of Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravishankar Prasad is worrying. He asserted in Parliament that the Indian citizen’s right to the internet was not a fundamental right. ‘While right of internet is important, security of the country is equally important…Can we deny (that) the internet is abused by terrorists…?’.

The minister’s primary defence of the shutdown – that the internet was being abused by terrorists and others to foment unrest – has some merit. Our starting point therefore is that big tech platforms should be doing a significantly better job in monitoring content and in removing material designed to provoke violence and hatred. This is the original sin and Asian governments are right to worry about messaging platforms, for example, becoming preferred channels for venom and hate speech.

To date, the big tech firms have made the right noises about monitoring and moderating content, but they have not gone far enough, providing governments with the excuse to routinely shut down access. To be blunt, self-regulation of the platforms is not working and tougher global regulation, enforcement and sanctions, possibly via the G20, would help.

At the same time, better policing of the platforms will not resolve the issue entirely because governments regard internet shutdowns as a useful way to restrict human rights and to consolidate political control and surveillance over citizens. The international community – including nation-states, NGOs and the private sector – needs to come together and embrace two overarching principles:

First, digital access is a fundamental human right and integrated into global declarations and norms.

Second, to protect fragmentation and Balkanization of the internet, the digital pipes which carry data across national boundaries should be embedded into international law as being part of the global commons (just like oceans are under maritime law). This would raise the bar on countries which frequently restrict digital access to their citizens.

Sensible though these recommendations might seem, it is obvious that many Asian governments would be loath to sign up to global declarations which would limit their policy options at home. There is an economic dimension to internet shutdowns, as the Kashmir case makes clear, which could be addressed by naming and shaming, just as the OECD’s Financial Action Task Force does for countries falling foul of money laundering regulations. Recommendations include:

• Digital access should be included in the UN’s Human Development Index.
• The World Bank’s closely followed Doing Business Index (DBI) should score countries favourably based on their commitment to offering unimpeded access to the internet. China and India watch the DBI rankings very closely and will be forced to pursue a more liberal approach if their rankings fall precipitously.
• Since internet shutdowns have a clear economic cost, particularly in payments and financial services, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should make an annual determination of member countries (as part of its surveillance mandate) of the impact of shutdowns on economic activity and financial stability.

Finally, all Asian governments have declared a public commitment to drive financial inclusion by providing digital access and identity to the poor and vulnerable. This mandate is at odds with frequent internet disruptions. A small vendor in Kashmir, Xinjiang or elsewhere in the region has limited or no recourse when the pipes are shut down. Central banks in the region need to step in by offering some level of protection, just like deposit insurance coverage.

It is clear that many of these recommendations would be rejected outright by many Asian governments. They regard internet shutdowns as part of their policy toolkit to deal with external and internal threats to national security. In pursuing such a rigid approach, governments are wilfully curbing their citizens’ space for debate and ignoring a much broader issue of rights to digital access.

Armed with a hammer, it is tempting for governments to regard the internet as a nail. The international community and citizens’ groups have an obligation to make such hammering very expensive.

Capacity to contain and respond to biological threats varies considerably across the world. Yet such preparedness is vital for prevention, impact-reduction and resilience in the face of biological events, whether they be natural or deliberate outbreaks.

Chatham House is conducting a series of meetings to strengthen urban preparedness for, and resilience against, biological threats in African countries. This meeting will examine the preparedness and prevention mechanisms in Accra, reviewing the comprehensiveness of city-level preparedness.  

This meeting will focus on the formation and implementation of city-level action plans in the context of preparedness for managing biological threats. It will also explore how local authorities are contributing to this effort with their knowledge and expertise.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

As tensions escalate in the Middle East, US President Donald Trump has threatened to strike targets in Iran should they seek to retaliate over the killing of Qassem Soleimani. According to the president’s tweet, these sites includes those that are ‘important to Iran and Iranian culture’.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper was quick on Monday to rule out any such action and acknowledged that the US would ‘follow the laws of armed conflict’. But Trump has not since commented further on the matter.

Any move to target Iranian cultural heritage could constitute a breach of the international laws protecting cultural property. Attacks on cultural sites are deemed unlawful under two United Nations conventions; the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property during Armed Conflict, and the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.

These have established deliberate attacks on cultural heritage (when not militarily necessary) as a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in recognition of the irreparable damage that the loss of cultural heritage can have locally, regionally and globally.

These conventions were established in the aftermath of the Second World War, in reaction to the legacy of the massive destruction of cultural property that took place, including the intense bombing of cities, and systematic plunder of artworks across Europe. The conventions recognize that damage to the cultural property of any people means ‘damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind’. The intention of these is to establish a new norm whereby protecting culture and history – that includes cultural and historical property – is as important as safeguarding people.

Such historical sites are important not simply as a matter of buildings and statues, but rather for their symbolic significance in a people’s history and identity. Destroying cultural artefacts is a direct attack on the identity of the population that values them, erasing their memories and historical legacy. Following the heavy bombing of Dresden during the Second World War, one resident summed up the psychological impact of such destruction in observing that ‘you expect people to die, but you don’t expect the buildings to die’.

Targeting sites of cultural significance isn’t just an act of intimidation during conflict. It can also have a lasting effect far beyond the cessation of violence, hampering post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction, where ruins or the absence of previously significant cultural monuments act as a lasting physical reminder of hostilities.

For example, during the Bosnian War in the 1990s, the Old Bridge in Mostar represented a symbol of centuries of shared cultural heritage and peaceful co-existence between the Serbian and Croat communities. The bridge’s destruction in 1993 at the height of the civil war and the temporary cable bridge which took its place acted as a lasting reminder of the bitter hostilities, prompting its reconstruction a decade later as a mark of the reunification of the ethnically divided town.

More recently, the destruction of cultural property has been a feature of terrorist organizations, such as the Taliban’s demolition of the 1,700-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001, eliciting international condemnation. Similarly, in Iraq in 2014 following ISIS’s seizure of the city of Mosul, the terrorist group set about systematically destroying a number of cultural sites, including the Great Mosque of al-Nuri with its leaning minaret, which had stood since 1172. And in Syria, the ancient city of Palmyra was destroyed by ISIS in 2015, who attacked its archaeological sites with bulldozers and explosives.

Such violations go beyond destruction: they include the looting of archaeological sites and trafficking of cultural objects, which are used to finance terrorist activities, which are also prohibited under the 1954 Hague Convention.

As a war crime, the destruction of cultural property has been successfully prosecuted in the International Criminal Court, which sentenced Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi to nine years in jail in 2016 for his part in the destruction of the Timbuktu mausoleums in Mali. Mahdi led members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to destroy mausoleums and monuments of cultural and religious importance in Timbuktu, irreversibly erasing what the chief prosecutor described as ‘the embodiment of Malian history captured in tangible form from an era long gone’.

Targeting cultural property is prohibited under customary international humanitarian law, not only by the Hague Convention. But the Convention sets out detailed regulations for protection of such property, and it has taken some states a lot of time to provide for these.

Although the UK was an original signatory to the 1954 Hague Convention, it did not ratify it until 2017, introducing into law the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Act 2017, and setting up the Cultural Protection Fund to safeguard heritage of international importance threatened by conflict in countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

Ostensibly, the UK’s delay in ratifying the convention lay in concerns over the definition of key terms and adequate criminal sanctions, which were addressed in the Second Protocol in 1999. However, changing social attitudes towards the plunder of antiquities, and an alarming increase in the use of cultural destruction as a weapon of war by extremist groups to eliminate cultures that do not align with their own ideology, eventually compelled the UK to act.

In the US, it is notoriously difficult to get the necessary majority for the approval of any treaty in the Senate; for the Hague Convention, approval was achieved in 2008, following which the US ratified the Convention in 2009.

Destroying the buildings and monuments which form the common heritage of humanity is to wipe out the physical record of who we are. People are people within a place, and they draw meaning about who they are from their surroundings. Religious buildings, historical sites, works of art, monuments and historic artefacts all tell the story of who we are and how we got here. We have a responsibility to protect them.