Culture and Conflict: The United States and the 1954 Hague Convention

The Lawyers' Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation and the United States Committee for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield have announced a conference on Oct. 22-23, 2009, about the domestic and international implementation of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. See http://www.culturalheritagelaw.org/events/lcchp-events/culture-conflict-conference

Both these organizations were instrumental in getting the United States Senate to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention, see http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/search/label/1954%20Hague%20Convention and the topic is an important one.

I also understand that there will be an earlier, invitation only "closed forum" on domestic implementation of the 1954 Hague Convention with government decision makers as well.

This begs the question why such secrecy is necessary and again suggests that archaeological organizations often seem to get "behind the scenes" access not readily available to others. Surely, despite protestations to the contrary by some elements within the archaeological community, see http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2008/08/caari-vp-ellen-herscher-response-to.html , archaeologists do lobby, and quite effectively at that.