Ivory 2020, published as an Art and Heritage Law Report, 39 pages, by Olivia Franklin.

Poaching of African elephants for raw ivory, amounting to nearly 100 each day, has prompted legislatures in the US, UK, and EU to tighten restrictions on the sale of elephant ivory in recent years. Despite arguments by the art trade that antique and ancient works of art should be exempted, and the trade in modern and raw ivory prohibited in order to protect elephant populations, many laws now ban trade in ivory altogether. The report summarizes and analyzes current and pending US, UK and EU Laws and regulations on trade in elephant ivory from Africa and Asia. The report provides an overview on the international framework and the restrictions on commercial use of ivory, from ancient to antique and modern, in order to provide guidance on what can and cannot be imported, exported, sold, donated or inherited.

Jewish Minorities in the Middle East, published as an Art and Heritage Law Report, 55 pages, by Katherine Brennan and Kate Fitz Gibbon.

The pervasive pattern of abuse of both human and property rights of religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East raises serious questions about the protection of minority interests within the nationalist framework of cultural policy today. This report examines the inability – or unwillingness – of state actors to protect cultural interests of religious and ethnic minorities. The devastation in the Middle East not only highlights the failure of the 1970 UNESCO Convention to ensure the protection of global cultural heritage after almost 50 years, despite its adoption by hundreds of nation states. It also makes a compelling argument for embracing broader concepts of global stewardship and international protection of heritage as a more workable approach to halting destruction in war and civil crisis, and to preserving mankind’s achievements for the future.

Bearing False Witness: The Media, ISIS and Antiquities, 2017, published as an Art and Heritage Law Report, 16 pages, by Katherine Brennan and Kate Fitz Gibbon.

The reflexive repetition of a false narrative about a multi-billion dollar illegal global antiquities market is an example of the media’s failure to investigate and corroborate its sources. Speculation, rather than factual analysis, has set policy direction for US, UK, and European governments ever since the first images appeared of ISIS destroying heritage sites as part of its larger reign of terror. This report shows how widespread, inaccurate information has distracted policy-makers from the substantive issues of terrorist-financing, and has given extremist advocates of nationalist interests a weapon to undermine the legitimacy of the global trade in art. It threatens the existence of a legitimate antiquities trade and encourages a narrow, highly-politicized view of culture that limits the ability of museums around the world to preserve art, study it, and show our shared human history to the public.