A/HRC/45/35 indigenous peoples may lack familiarity with the institutional and professional norms guiding museum professionals. 16. International repatriation requires the navigation of complex legal, jurisdictional, political and diplomatic challenges. For indigenous peoples, determining the whereabouts of their ceremonial items, human remains and intangible cultural heritage on a global scale can be a daunting task in terms of information, costs and human resources. While national museums or other institutions may already have working relationships with indigenous peoples in their own countries, they may not be familiar with State agencies working on indigenous issues or have contact information for indigenous peoples in other countries. These issues can be remedied with better information, as well as supportive intermediaries. III. Legal, ethical and political framework on the repatriation of ceremonial objects and human remains 17. Indigenous peoples have their own laws on and customs and traditions concerning cultural objects, human remains and cultural heritage.15 Many indigenous laws are held and transmitted in the oral tradition of the people. For example, Native Hawaiian tradition establishes the appropriate treatment of human remains and the intergenerational obligations of the living to their ancestors, calling for ancestors to be buried and protected. In some instances, indigenous governments have codified and published their laws. For example, the Tribal Criminal Code of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma provides that it is unlawful to purposely desecrate a place of worship or burial, or other sacred place (sect. 516). 16 In all instances, indigenous peoples’ own laws, customs and traditions must be followed by all participants with respect to treatment of ceremonial objects, human remains and cultural heritage. 18. Stakeholders must also assess national laws which, in many cases, limit deaccessioning. The British Museum Act of 1963 provides that the Museum can sell, exchange, give away or otherwise dispose of an object only if the object is a duplicate of another such object; if the object appears to the Trustees to have been made not earlier than the year 1850, and substantially consists of printed matter of which a copy made by photography or a process akin to photography is held by the Trustees; or if, in the opinion of the Trustees, the object is unfit to be retained in the collections of the Museum and can be disposed of without detriment to the interests of students (sect. 5 (1)). 19. While governments and museums often assert that such laws prohibit them from repatriating items to indigenous peoples, many laws have room for interpretation. For example, while Swedish law emphasizes the duty of care held by national museums towards collections, it allows for restitution not only in the case of illicit acquisition but also for special ethical reasons, a provision that has been used to allow repatriation in some cases. While the law of the Russian Federation stipulates that museum objects and museum collections in the Museum Fund may be dispossessed or transferred from one person to another by virtue of universal succession only, it also contains a provision for special permission of the authorized federal executive body.17 20. Moreover, as discussed in section V below, some national laws already require repatriation of human remains and ceremonial items to indigenous peoples. 21. With regard to international repatriation, a number of instruments dealing with illicit acquisition, trafficking and repatriation of cultural property may be helpful. The Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of 1954 calls on States to take special measures to protect cultural property and to avoid misappropriating or damaging such property during times of armed conflict or occupation. The Convention recognizes the vulnerability of cultural property during wartime and the principle that damage to the cultural property of any people means “damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind”. The Convention does not apply retroactively, but may be helpful to indigenous peoples who 15 16 17 Angela Riley, “Straight stealing: towards an indigenous system of cultural property protection”, Washington Law Review, vol. 80, No. 69 (2005). See https://narf.org/nill/codes/pawneecode/crimoffense.html. Submission from the Russian Federation (in Russian). 5