New German Guidelines on Colonial Returns Fail Rights Test

Click to expand Image Benin bronzes looted in the past and returned to Nigeria by Germany are examined during a handing over ceremony in Abuja, December 20, 2022. © 2022 Olamikan Gbemiga/AP Photo Last week, German federal, state, and local authorities adopted Common Guidelines on the handling of cultural assets and human remains from colonial contexts. Despite the welcome efforts to regulate the returns cultural belongings and ancestral remains from colonial contexts, the guidelines appear to go out of the way to distance such returns from international human rights standards on colonial…

© Human Rights Watch - jeudi 23 octobre 2025