Crimes against cultural heritage: World-building at the International Criminal Court

Abstract Despite being outlawed, attacks on cultural heritage remain a pervasive feature in atrocity contexts, the effects of which are compounded by a relative deficit of accountability at the international level. To remedy this gap, the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued Policy on Cultural Heritage . However, crimes against cultural heritage are not fully articulated in the Court’s governing instruments. To leverage the protective scope of the Court, the Policy adopts a human rights understanding of cultural heritage which I frame in terms of distinctive relationships between heritage and atrocity crimes. The Policy fertilises a second argument shorthanded as world-building. Against world-destruction, the Policy erects an accountability architecture. Conceptually, it foregrounds an understanding of the world as a cultural construct around which social relations are organised. Crimes against heritage undercut the very notion of what it means to be human; disrupt cultural identification, transmission, and development processes; and deny present and future generations the ability to be specific kinds of cultural human beings. In those regards, this article adds to the world society research agenda of English School theory by examining how the Policy more fully develops the Court’s role as an agent for humanity.