It is a violation of several international humanitarian laws and international cultural heritage laws to conduct attacks, destruction, and looting of cultural heritage and use it for military purposes. However, except for the shelling of Dubrovnik old town punished by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, such offences have hardly been addressed at the criminal court.
Meanwhile, a person who ordered and conducted the attack against ten mausoleums and mosque in Timbuktu, Mali, nine of which are on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List, in 2012 was found guilty under the Statute of International Criminal Court (ICC) that provides that “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments”, “provided they are not military objectives”, is war crime, and sentenced to 9 years’ imprisonment by ICC in 2016. Further, he was ordered reparations at 2.7 million euros in 2017 that was designed to consist of reparations for the damaged mausoleums and mosque, reparations for the consequential economic loss and reparations for the moral harm. It was the first case that an intentional attack against cultural heritage was sanctioned as a war crime at the ICC, and the first case that a conviction was decided at any international tribunals or courts solely on the grounds of an offence relating to cultural heritage.
On the other hand, lots of deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in countries of north Africa and the Middle East has been observed in the last decade. It has been an international issue to find out how those violations would be brought to justice regardless of whether it would be at the ICC or at a national court.
Having these as a background, taking the case of Timbuktu as a concrete example, this study aims at investigating how an intentional attack against cultural heritage could be punished. In particular, putting a special focus on the evaluation of value of the attacked mausoleums and mosque, it examines how the damage was assessed, victims were identified, and the damage would be recovered through reparations programs in the case of Timbuktu by analyzing official relevant documents of ICC.
As a result, it revealed that with regard to the damage assessment and the victims identification, symbolic and emotional value of the mausoleums and mosque and their significance for the international society were especially carefully considered. In relation to symbolic and emotional value, while recognizing the cultural and religious connection between the mausoleums and mosque and people, experts and the Chamber observed that the attack against them made it impossible to continue that connection, and then the rights to the freedom of worship, the cultural rights, and local identity were infringed.
As for the international significance, the philosophy evolved in the field of cultural heritage conservation, including the concept of shared heritage of mankind and universal value of heritage, were reflected on the consideration. Regarding reparations projects, not only the work for the physical reconstruction of the mausoleums and mosque but also the projects that will enable the reconstruction of the Timbuktu community as a whole and its sustainability were approved. It shows the close relationship between the social reconstruction and the reconstruction of cultural heritage in the post-conflict period of Timbuktu.
