A proteção jurídica do patrimônio cultural diante das novas formas de conflitos armados

Abstract

This study seeks to analyse the protection of cultural property towards new forms of armed conflicts. The research focuses, on the one hand, on the ethnographic and historic elements of culture and, on the other hand, on the legal features of that kind of protection. Therewith, the first Chapter seeks to demonstrate the extent to which a certain group‘s cultural features and its differences in comparison to others humans groups features‘ are related to the sparking of armed conflicts. This dissertation, although not having gathered primary data, is based upon several ethnographical studies, paving the way in order to build up a historical approach on the threatens armed conflicts pose over cultural heritage. In chapter one, general features of contemporary armed conflicts are described and compared to its standards from the first half of the 20TH Century. Some distinctions are also stated between armed conflicts and other phenomena that do not fit into the definition of armed conflicts to this work‘s scope. The crisis of the combatant status is also examined in chapter one. Chapter two is more dogmatically founded and concerns to the analyse of the international legislation related to the protection of cultural heritage in case of armed conflict, particularly the 1954 Hague Convention and its two additional protocols. Chapter three focus on the crime of genocide and the destruction of cultural property that follows it. The centrality oh the human being is one of its distinctive points. Finally, chapter four deals with the criminal consequences arising from the acts of destruction of cultural heritage and the relevance of the effectiveness of the international criminal law in order to dissuade people from practising acts such as that of the of the destruction of cultural property.