Cultural heritage is a prerequisite for safe and peaceful global development

At their meeting in Stockholm on 30 October 2019, the Nordic ministers for culture adopted the following declaration:

We, the Nordic ministers for culture

have noted in particular that in several resolutions (the latest being resolution 2462 of March 2019 on the funding of terrorism), the UN Security Council calls for the strengthening of national efforts to prevent the illegal trade in cultural artefacts, and for the reporting of measures;

have noted several key initiatives in the follow-up of the Nordic ministerial declaration of 2015, including two Nordic conferences and a co-ordination meeting between the Nordic cultural authorities. Similar regional workshops and seminars have recently taken place in other regions under the auspices of UNESCO, INTERPOL, the WCO, and the EU;

highlight the important work done by UNESCO, the WCO, UNODC, and the EU in developing practical tools to support the efforts of public authorities in preventing cultural crime and illegal trade;

call on Nordic players to actively further share e-learning platforms within their environments;

have noted the Council of Europe convention on cultural crime – Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Property (Nicosia, 2017) – as being a key supplement to UNESCO’s cultural conventions and the UNIDROIT convention on the return of stolen and illegally procured cultural artefacts;

stress that the Nicosia convention will, when it comes into affect, pave the way for global accession and could thus become an important tool for countries in need of better legal protection of cultural values;

call on other sectors, in light of UNSR 2347 (2018), to integrate culture and cultural heritage as a key process in their efforts to meet the Agenda 2030 within their respective areas of education, research, climate and the environment, as well as defence and military operations;

call on all parts of civil society to get involved in protecting global cultural heritage, while we ourselves recognise our special responsibility for safeguarding and promoting our own national cultural heritage; and

call on professional authorities in the Nordic Region to further develop Nordic co-operation in line with the conclusions of the Oslo conference in 2015, with a continued focus on the co-ordination of measures, communication, skills development and knowledge, as well as the mapping of existing co-operation and initiatives.