‘War and the Protection of Cultural Heritage’ zoom webinar at IAL’s 6 May at 1pm (see below) – I am attending this talk. My question in advance for the panel is,
‘Could Cultural Heritage diplomacy be a neutral method of mediating a ceasefire to create a network of humanitarian corridors, i.e. by designating certain areas as “Cultural Heritage Safe Zones” and then linking them up?’ 
In any conflict, the humanitarian aim of Cultural Heritage protection always competes with military operations. Since there is no international authority responsible for defining: (i) each country’s cultural property; and (ii) the case of ‘military necessity’/’loss of immunity’ on the ground, is there anything that a State actor engaged in military conflict, or the UN, can do, either unilaterally or multilaterally, to designate cultural sites in a War zone (including cities), as de-militarised ‘Cultural Heritage Safe Zones?’ If these safe zones (which are not policed ‘no-fly’ zones) are linked, I wonder if this could create a matrix of humanitarian corridors, and result in a ceasefire?
I expect that the answer is that while this is theoretically possible, it is not practical, because of the behaviour of Russia’s armed forces, i.e. this would result in confrontation, and escalate the conflict to a potential world and ‘nuclear’ war. Arguably, if Russia invades a NATO member state, uses a chemical weapon in Central Europe, or is the perceived cause of an imminent global evironmental catastrophe, confrontation is inevitable. For some observers, it is therefore not a question of ‘whether’ but of ‘when’.
The language and tools of Cultural Heritage Diplomacy enable a Mediation framework to be jointly developed by those at War by identifying common ground, e.g. a shared cultural heritage (which may include a shared set of religious beliefs and moral values), and the connection between: (i) protecting cultural heritage; and (ii) preserving the environment, e.g. where there is a risk of nuclear contamination because there is a nuclear power plant in the War Zone that could be attacked.
Assuming that one outcome of the War in Ukraine will be reform of the UN Security Council, a subsidiary question is whether it is possible to create a parallel UN council with the power to make decisions about humanitarian intervention in order to prevent e.g. a global environmental, i.e. nuclear catastrophe, by: (i) designating a zone; and (ii) declaring an emergency, in each case by passing an extraordinary UN resolution to be passed by a majority? If it is, then could an international UN ‘environmental’ protection/peace keeping force be sent to the zone to patrol and protect it, e.g. the excluded zone around Chernobyl. If it could, then does this give the UN a legal tool for deploying a military force to a matrix of zones without risking nuclear war through direct confrontation? Note that cultural heritage includes landscape.