UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Culture, Françoise Riviere, today issued an international appeal to protect Haiti’s cultural heritage from pillage following the earthquake that devastated the country. She proposed to order a seizure that would temporarily prevent the buying and selling of Haitian art works.

Riviere put forward this initiative while attending a homage being paid in Madrid to the International Committee for the Safeguarding of Spanish Art Treasures, organism to which the main European Museums and New York’s Metropolitan Museum joined in 1939 to save hundreds of artworks from Civil War bombardments by sending them abroad.

Inspired by this idea, Riviere has invited the world’s major museums to safeguard Haitian heritage and to preserve its artwork.

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