A/71/317 under article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights includes the obligation to respect and protect cultural heritage (general comment No. 21, para. 50). In its resolution 6/1 on the protection of cultural rights and property in situations of armed conflict, the Human Rights Council reaffirmed that the destruction of or any other form of damage to cultural property may impair the enjoyment of cultural rights, in particular under article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 16. Numerous other international instruments protect cultural heritage. Although not all of them take a human rights approach to cultural heritage, a shift in focus has occurred in recent years, from the preservation and safeguard of cultural heritage as such to the protection of cultural heritage as being of crucial value for human beings in relation to their cultural identity. Notable in this regard are the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972), the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001) and the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003). 17. A specific protection regime governs the protection of cultural heritage in times of armed conflict. Core standards include the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Additional Protocols thereto of 1977, the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and the 1954 and 1999 Protocols thereto and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998). Besides these various treaties, a body of customary international humanitarian law protects cultural heritage in armed conflict and “(m)any of the relevant conventional rules, if not declaratory of custom when agreed, have come to reflect it in the period since, while others must now be interpreted in the light of later custom”. 8 18. The 1954 Hague Convention requires States parties to respect cultural property and refrain from any act of hostility directed against it or any use of it likely to expose it to such acts, subject only to imperative military necessity (article 4). This provision also requires States to prohibit, prevent and, if necessary, put a stop to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of, and any acts of vandalism directed against, cultural property. 19. In addition, under article 3, the 1954 Hague Convention requires that States prepare in peacetime for protection of heritage in conflict. In accordance with article 28, parties must prosecute and impose penal or disciplinary sanctions upon those persons, of whatever nationality, who commit or order a breach of the Convention. The Second Protocol to the Convention strengthens this provision by requiring the codification of a criminal offence, including extension of responsibility to higher command (article 15 (2)). 20. In light of concerns about the ongoing attacks on cultural property following the entry into force of the Convention and the First Proto col, the Second Protocol was developed to enhance protection. It narrows the application of the “military necessity” waiver to those cases where “no feasible alternative (is) available to obtain a similar military advantage” and it imposes standards of proportionality to prevent or minimize collateral damage. __________________ 8 16-13742 Roger O’Keefe, “Protection of cultural property”, in The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Armed Conflict, Andrew Clapham and others, eds. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 498. 7/24