If art is a window into the soul of a culture and ancient civilization, then you would expect there to be a coherent body of law known as the ‘International Law of Art and Civilization’. However, you will struggle to find a legal textbook about the subject, even though the subject-matter is as old as time.

There are books about International Cultural Heritage Law and Practice, whose disparate sources include:

·       International Law Treaties.
·       Jus Cogens (absolute) and Erga Omnes (universal) norms of International Law (including ‘inalienability of sovereignty’).
·       ‘Fiduciary Principles’ under International Law.
·       Museum Codes of Practice.
·       Ethical principles grounded in moral philosophy (including reparative justice, distributive justice and natural law).

However, ‘Rights and Civilizations – A History and Philosophy of International Law’ (2010), by Gustavo Gozzi (which was translated into English in 20I9) and published by Cambridge University Press, is one of the few books that traces the history of International Law, in order to explain how the West sought to justify its own ‘colonial’ conquests through an ideology that revolved around the idea of its own assumed ‘superiority’, thereby exposing the fallacy at the heart of International Law – that while the Western conception styles itself as being ‘universal’, it is in fact ‘relative’.

Since the emergence of a geopolitically ‘multipolar’/’multi-nodal’ world order and of ‘BRICS’, there has been an urgent need for an ‘intercivilizational’ approach to international law. This requires a dialogue about reform, between key stakeholders.

In my next book – ‘Mediation of International Cultural Heritage Disputes – Anachronism, Orientalism, Culture, Ethics & Law’, in the context of the Mediation of these disputes, I advocate the adoption by the participants, of an ‘intercivilizational’ approach to international law, as their ‘lodestar’.

In doing so, I explore whether the substantive issues in dispute that divide ‘state actors’ in these disputes, are in fact a potential source of convergence and consensus for their mutual benefit. To view the current chapter structure for the book, please visit the ‘International Cultural Heritage Disputes’ page at www.carlislam.co.uk.

I ask whether the adoption of an ‘intercivilizational’ paradigm to international law, is the key which can unlock the hidden door to the resolution of these seemingly intractable international disputes.

In other words, I wonder – ‘What is the potential power in the Mediation of an International Cultural Heritage Dispute, of reframing International Law by adopting an intercivilizational” paradigm?’