Using UNIDROIT to avoid cultural heritage disputes: limitation periods

In the year 2000, the Minister for the Arts in the United Kingdom established an Advisory Panel on Illicit Trade (panel). Its terms of reference included the following: "To consider how most effectively, both through legislative and non-legislative means, the UK can play its part in preventing and prohibiting the illicit trade, and to advise the government accordingly." In its Report of December 2000, the panel advised that the United Kingdom should accede to the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970 (UNESCO Convention) and against accession to the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects 1995 (UNIDROIT Convention). The British Government accepted the panel's advice and the United Kingdom became party to the UNESCO Convention in 2002. Interestingly, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons had recommended exactly the opposite a short time before the publication of the Advisory Panel on Illicit Trade report.