Recourse With The Looted Cultural Relics From The Perspective Of International Law

Being one of the world’s four countries of great civilizations, China hasinnumerable cultural relics, however, due to wars, stealing, smuggling and otherreasons, enormous amount of cultural relics had been removed overseas. Accordingly,the recovery of cultural relics that outflow becomes one of the great responsibilitieswe must take on.This thesis introduces the measures to recover these cultural relics in theframework of international law, and puts forward some suggestions for our country’srecovery cultural relics.Part one briefly describes the fundamental issues of the recovery of culturalrelics, and analyzes two opposing theories concerning the recovery of cultural relics,namely cultural internationalism and cultural nationalism.Part two focuses on three important international conventions used to recovercultural relics, including1954Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property inthe Event of Armed Conflict and its Protocols,1970Convention on the Means ofProhibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership ofCultural Property(1970UNSECO Convention),1995Convention on Stolen orIllegally Exported Cultural Objects(1995UNIDROIT Convention).Part three concerns some legal questions appeared in the international litigationwhen recovering cultural relics, especially about the applicable law rules, the bonafide acquisition system and the limitation rules.Part four introduces the way of international arbitration to recover cultural relics.Part five mainly provides some proposals for our country’s recovery of culturalrelics.Overall, though there are many difficulties in the recovery of cultural relics usinginternational law, it is still a practical manner that we must make effective utilization.However, in order to push the recovery of cultural relics, we should integrate legalmeans and other means, coordinate the official channels and private channels, and combine the domestic environment and international environment.