Rabat – In August, Morocco ratified the convention on stolen or illegally exported cultural objects, reiterating the country’s efforts to preserve cultural heritage and recover smuggled cultural property.
The convention was first initiated by the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) in 1995. It was designed to be a complementary agreement to the 1970 UNESCO Convention that prevents and prohibits the illegal import, export, and transfer of ownership of cultural property.
Morocco ratified the UNESCO document in February 2003.
Morocco’s Ministry of Communication and Culture noted on Thursday that the UNIDROIT convention provides a “unified and simplified” legal framework for bilateral cooperation to secure the recovery of illegally trafficked cultural property.
Under the convention, countries can submit requests to reclaim stolen and trafficked cultural properties in the national courts of the concerned parties.
The recent Moroccan ratification comes as “an effort to keep pace with international efforts to combat illegal trafficking of cultural property, and within the framework of [the country’s] strategy aimed at protecting its cultural heritage and recovering smuggled [artifacts],” the ministry said.
In February, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s Art Crime Team returned a fossilized crocodile skull to the Moroccan Embassy in Washington DC.
The 56 million-year-old crocodile fossil was smuggled to the United States along with 7,000 other artifacts before returning to Morocco. The skull was later displayed in the Rabat Zoo.
To preserve national heritage, Morocco recovered last year a total of 25,000 geological, archaeological, and ethnographic artifacts. Many of them originate from the Anti-Atlas region and Southern provinces, and date back to prehistoric times.
In 2020, Morocco recovered 25,500 rare artifacts and fossils from France under the guidelines of the 1970 UNESCO convention.
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