Benjamin Isakhan

Recent scholarship has suggested that when norms are clustered together, they become either more resilient than standalone norms or may collide in practice. However, little attention has been paid to how, and under what conditions, norm clusters can evolve over time. This article addresses this lacuna by proposing a new model of norm cluster expansion. The model captures how clusters can evolve incrementally yet substantively through revising foundational problem(s) and value(s), disaggregating and advancing their core behaviour(s) and then re-aggregating them into a revised norm cluster. To explore the empirical utility of the model, this article focuses on the case study of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It documents the ways in which UNESCO responded to the destruction of World Heritage sites by terrorist groups from 2012 onwards by reframing the mandate that had driven much of the agency’s response to heritage destruction since its founding in 1945. That is, UNESCO oversaw an expansion from a norm cluster that emphasized the need to ‘Save the Heritage of the World’, towards a broader mandate that would ‘Prevent Threats to Human Security’. The case of UNESCO problematises the binary between resilience and collision, suggesting that norm clusters can expand by layering new elements onto foundational normative architecture. The article concludes that further research is needed to test the model’s applicability to other domains and to enhance our understanding of the complex role norm clusters play in International Relations.

Cultural heritage preservation and protection are increasingly tethered to an international security agenda constituted across multilateral agencies. UNESCO and other organizations have securitized heritage, engaging in military training and peacekeeping, international law and prosecution, and cultural property protection. Following the events in Iraq and Syria, UN Security Council resolutions have instantiated norms of heritage violence, risk, and threat, while the Global War on Terror also interpolated looting, trafficking, and terror financing into a heritage-protection agenda. We compare these developments with our large-scale public opinion survey of Mosul and Aleppo residents’ experiences of heritage violence and the implications for security and reconstruction. While our results display potential overlaps with UNSC concerns, we suggest that site destruction and broader security concerns are understood differently on the ground, shaped by political and economic factors. We argue for a more humanitarian focus if any relationship between heritage, security, and, indeed, peacebuilding is to be forged.

The rapid advance of the “Islamic State” (IS) across Syria and Iraq from 2013 onwards had devastating consequences for the myriad peoples of the region and their key heritage sites. However, despite the large volume of literature on heritage in conflict, there remains few empirical studies documenting how people who have been displaced by conflict value and engage with their heritage: how they perceive and interpret its destruction; the complex relationship between heritage destruction and displacement; and the extent to which its reconstruction can play a role in their return, in fostering social cohesion, and in building a more peaceful future. This chapter seeks to address this lacuna by documenting the results of 53 interviews with Iraqis and Syrians, many of whom were eyewitnesses to heritage destruction and were forcibly displaced by the IS. The chapter concludes that further research is needed to catalogue the complex ways that displaced people experience heritage destruction and the role that heritage reconstruction can play in fostering their return.

Following the devastation of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul by the Islamic State, various foreign actors launched initiatives to reconstruct the heritage sites of the city. However, such efforts are underpinned by assumptions about how local people value their heritage, how they perceive its destruction, whether they view reconstruction as a priority and the extent to which they support foreign-led efforts to rebuild their heritage. This article holds these assumptions up to empirical scrutiny via an original survey of 1600 Mosul residents and their attitudes towards heritage. The results hold four key implications for current and future heritage projects in Mosul, namely that while residents want to see heritage sites reconstructed, they prefer that heritage reconstruction not be privileged over humanitarian aid, development and peace building; includes the rebuilding of their local religious sites as much as iconic and/or non-religious sites and transforms sites into new and more useful structures to the community, and while they acknowledge the work of foreign actors, they want agency and control over the future of their heritage. The article concludes by noting that such findings hold important implications for future foreign-led heritage projects in (post-)conflict environments where mass human suffering and heritage destruction has taken place.