Property – Lyon, 5-6 April 2011

The participants of the 8th Meeting of the INTERPOL Expert Group (IEG) on Stolen Cultural Property, held in Lyon, France on 5-6 April 2011:

• CONSCIENT of the threats to cultural heritage in countries and regions affected by civil unrest, armed conflicts and natural catastrophes, and the high risk of illicit trafficking in unlawfully removed cultural property,

• CALL UPON UNESCO, ICOM and INTERPOL to rapidly collect and disseminate information on cultural goods particularly at risk,

• AWARE of the urgent need to enable all countries to effectively combat illicit trafficking in cultural property from these countries,

• ENCOURAGE ICOM to continue to publish Red Lists of cultural objects at risk,

• RECOGNIZING the need for specific skills in order to effectively fight the illicit trafficking in cultural property,

• INVITE INTERPOL and its member countries, as well as international Organizations to organize and contribute to training sessions for law enforcement officials and representatives of judicial and cultural bodies,

• ACKNOWLEDGING the various legal specificities in many national legislations concerning the handling of cultural property cases and the lack of specialization of the authorities in charge,

• ENCOURAGE INTERPOL member countries to provide practical guidelines to law enforcement authorities in order to enable optimum prosecution of such cases,

• AWARE of the legal requirements of international legal assistance, the need to cope with short deadlines for their completion, and the lack of adequate knowledge concerning this matter in a lot of requesting countries,

• ENCOURAGE INTERPOL member countries to provide useful orientation on how to collect evidence for their further use to arrange a successful internationalrogatory commission, the important role of INTERPOL’s database of stolen cultural property and the extended online access,

• ENCOURAGE member countries to systematically provide appropriate stolen art information and its regular update to the INTERPOL General Secretariat,

• AWARE of the huge amount of sales of cultural property and the risk concerning objects of illicit origin,

• ASK INTERPOL in co-operation with UNESCO, ICOM and other relevant experts to elaborate and disseminate, particularly to the art market, a checklist of recommended actions to comply with due diligence prior to cultural property transactions,

• ACKNOWLEDGING the important role of e-commerce for the illicit sale of cultural property,

• ENCOURAGE member countries to develop a close co-operation with internet platforms following the basic recommendations jointly published by ICOM, INTERPOL and UNESCO in 2007, with a view to facilitating access to confidential information for timely and effective investigations,

• RECOGNIZING the lack of crucial documentation and inventories of cultural property in many countries,

• ASK ICOM, UNESCO, INTERPOL and its member countries to focus on the need for establishing reliable inventories and to promote the use of Object ID for this purpose,

• TAKING NOTE of the importance of UNESCO’s Cultural Heritage Laws Database,

• ASK member countries to systematically provide their cultural heritage legislation to UNESCO, ensure regular updates and invite INTERPOL, international Organizations and national authorities to create a direct link from their web sites to this database,

• NOTING the increasing number of counterfeits, fakes and forgeries of all types of cultural property and works of art,

• ENCOURAGE INTERPOL to explore taking specific action to combat this criminal activity,

• ACKNOWLEDGING the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its potential usefulness to address crime prevention and criminal justice aspects of illicit trafficking in cultural property,

• ASK INTERPOL, the UNODC and other relevant international Organizations to collect information on organized criminal groups involved in the illicit trafficking in cultural property.