Revisiting Enhanced Protection: Implications from a Practical Case Study

The 1999 Second Protocol to the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954) created a new legal framework to improve protection for the world’s most important cultural property in cases of conflict, called enhanced protection. However, it has never been tested. In representing the NGO Blue Shield International, I had the opportunity to test it on the NATO training exercise STEADFAST JACKAL 2023. The training audience, Eurocorps, was presented with a complex non-international armed conflict in which tensions escalated over a (fictional) site under enhanced protection. Multiple stakeholders, including the national owners and armed non-state groups, provoked conflicting legal and policy obligations. The actions taken by Eurocorps raised implications for safeguarding enhanced protection sites in real situations, which this article seeks to highlight and explore, offering a new understanding of the application of law in practice. The article argues that in certain circumstances enhanced protection may lead to competing obligations regarding human rights, justice, and cultural protection. Those registering sites and acting to protect them must consider likely scenarios carefully to establish good practices. Otherwise, enhanced protection could defend sites to the detriment of those that value them.