ICOM Voices ICOM & G20: Strengthening the dialogue on Return and Restitution of Cultural Property

For the fourth consecutive year, ICOM has been invited to participate as an observatory member to the G20 Culture Working Group, hosted this year by South Africa under the theme “Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability”. To prepare its contribution to the four priorities chosen by the South African presidency of G20, ICOM collaborated with experts from its network. The discussions resulted in the KwaDukuza Declaration, which was adopted by the G20 Culture Ministers in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa on 29 October 2025, as well as in the G20 South Africa Summit: Leader’s Declaration, adopted on 22-23 November 2025. Over the past few months, ICOM Voices has been highlighting the contributions of the ICOM experts consulted through a series articles, giving them a space to share their views and the work of museums in these areas.

This article presents the work of ICOM experts in the context of discussions on Priority 1, “Safeguarding and Restitution of Cultural Heritage to Protect Human Rights”, during the G20 Culture Working Group meetings.

Authors

Giuditta Giardini: Lawyer / Chair ICOM Legal Affairs Committee.

Placide Mumbembele: Professor of the history of museums in Congo, University of Kinshasa, and researcher, Institute of National Museums of Congo (IMNC).

Hanna Pennock: Senior Advisor, Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands / Chair ICOM Working Group on Decolonisation.

Heritage Protection Department, ICOM Secretariat.

Priority 1 highlights the vital role of safeguarding cultural heritage and the importance of the return and restitution of cultural property and belongings. This article presents three expert perspectives for museums, discussing: (1) actions based on law, consisting of existing legal mechanisms for return and restitution of cultural property, and ways to address their limitations, (2) actions based on normative instruments, such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in shaping ethical approaches to Indigenous collections, and (3) collaborative efforts between museums and source communities to work together and foster meaningful dialogue in restitution processes.

With greater attention given to the provenance of cultural objects in cultural institutions, museums − in order to improve transparency and make their research work more visible − are increasingly making available the information they hold, indicating the provenance of the objects they exhibit on labels in their collections, and making related documentation accessible online. As a result, claims and voluntary restitutions have increased in the past decades.

Principle 6.3 of the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums (2004 version) dictates that whenever a cultural object is demonstrably exported or otherwise transferred in violation of international conventions and national legislation, and there is proof that it belongs to the cultural heritage of a country or community, the museum concerned should, if legally free to do so, take prompt and responsible steps to cooperate in its return.

The legal framework governing restitution and return has not changed significantly in recent years; what has changed is museums’ increased proactivity in using existing instruments. A fundamental principle of the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums requires museums to conform not only to national and local laws, including the laws of communities (Principle 7.1), but also to international conventions listed in Principle 7.2.

The first international instrument covering issues of restitution or return was the First Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which contains the principle of the prohibition of retention of cultural property illegally removed in war time. When an occupation ends, any Contracting Party must return the cultural object to the pre-occupation authorities.

While the First Protocol applies to cultural objects that change hands during international and national conflicts, the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property was later adopted to compel the return and restitution of illegally removed cultural objects to their State of origin both in times of war and in times of peace.

To strengthen the private international law aspects of return and restitution and to address issues of good-faith purchase of cultural objects, the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects was adopted in 1995. More than twenty years later, in 2017, the Council of Europe’s Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Property sought to harmonise criminal law for the protection of cultural objects.

All existing legal instruments, by their nature, are not retroactive; however, nothing prevents States from taking a more generous, proactive approach to restitution in interpreting and applying them. To encourage this, ICOM Legal Affairs Committee (LEAC) is developing guidelines for museums that set out legal and non-legal steps to follow when requesting or returning movable cultural objects. Such actions may be grounded in law, policy, or ethics.

During the colonial period, many cultural belongings were taken illegally or unethically through imbalanced power relations, resulting in the involuntary loss of cultural heritage. This concerns especially Indigenous Peoples’ heritage, often living or secret-sacred objects, and ancestral remains, of which the loss is still sorely felt. These collections mostly ended up in Western museums where they are displayed, often out of context, or kept in storage without always respecting Indigenous protocols.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) recognises the rights of Indigenous Peoples, including repatriation and control over their belongings in museums. This has implications for museums that hold Indigenous collections – whether they are located in nations that have an Indigenous population or not. Repatriation of ancestral remains and cultural belongings is just one of the rights mentioned.

UNDRIP stresses the right to redress concerning cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without free, prior and informed consent, or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs. Indigenous people must have access to their belongings in privacy – museums should make ceremonial use possible by creating special rooms for them or by loaning cultural belongings to communities. Museums can no longer operate unilaterally when presenting the cultural heritage of Indigenous Peoples. They must do this in conjunction with the Indigenous Peoples concerned, enabling them to exercise their right to revitalise, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages and traditions. They own the knowledge, and by controlling the story being told and the language used, they maintain their intellectual property.

This means that museums must take proper care for these collections in accordance with Indigenous protocols, recognise and redress the injustice, reach out proactively to Indigenous Peoples and return collections if this is the wish of the Indigenous community of origin. ICOM’s Working Group on Decolonisation, installed in 2023, presented its report to the ICOM Executive Board in July 2025. One of its recommendations is to adopt UNDRIP in order to increase awareness of a rights-based approach within ICOM and the museum sector.

Local communities that produce and maintain traditional knowledge and skills are essential partners for museums, as their participation in exhibitions and educational activities allows museums to rethink and redesign their museographical approaches. Dialogue between cultural institutions and local communities therefore helps to rewrite the history of collections, in the interest of transparency and respect for source communities. By working together and sharing information to co-create knowledge, museums and source communities can also develop a better understanding of cultural objects by advancing research on their provenance.

In Africa and elsewhere, museums must continue their efforts to become spaces that affirm the sovereignty, independence and cultural identity of source communities. Those communities are still marginalised and sidelined from discussions on the restitution of cultural objects that were taken illegally or unethically during the colonial period – a current priority in both political and intellectual spheres – even though their involvement in the restitution process should be a key aspect of decolonisation in museums.

A growing number of participatory initiatives place respect and knowledge sharing at the heart of restitution practices. One example is the Maasai-Pitt Rivers Living Cultures project[1] (2017-2024), which brought together the Pitt Rivers Museum (UK) and the Maasai people of East Africa to discuss the ethical conservation, redress and restitution of Maasai artefacts. The partnership – facilitated by the NGO InsightShare – gave Maasai participants the power to decide on the project’s organisation and approach, making them full stakeholders in the partnership and creating a true dialogue between the two parties.

Much progress still needs to be made, which is why we strongly encourage the initiation and continuation of dialogues between museums and source communities to build a lasting foundation for a more just future.

By addressing legal, Indigenous, and community-based perspectives on the return and restitution of cultural property and belongings, this article illustrates the complex and interconnected dimensions of these processes for museums. ICOM’s participation in the G20 Culture Working Group provided an opportunity to reflect on how museums can actively contribute to these guiding principles and to highlight the diverse expertise within the ICOM network.

“We acknowledge the importance attached by the countries of origin to the return or restitution of cultural property that is of fundamental spiritual, historical and cultural value to them so that they may constitute collections representative of their cultural heritage. We reaffirm our support for open and inclusive dialogue, on the return and restitution of cultural property, while acknowledging the increased recognition of its value for strengthening social cohesion”. 

Extract of the G20 South Africa Summit: Leader’s Declaration, paragraph 112.

• 2025 G20 Culture Minister – KwaDukuza Declaration (3 November)
• G20 South Africa Summit: Leader’s Declaration (22-23 November)

[1] An article on the project (“Museums at the Service of Cultural Relations: The Maasai-Pitt Rivers Museum Living Cultures Partnership”, by Carla Figueira) was published in the “Partnerships & Collaborations” issue of Museum International (Vol. 73, No. 3-4) and is available in Open Access on the Taylor & Francis website.