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A call for ratification of culture convention
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| Director of Maritime Affairs, McClean Hobson |
Basseterre; St. Kitts - The sea bed of St.Kitts and Nevis is littered with hundreds of wrecks and valuable artifacts making our under water cultural heritage one of the richest in the world, but without adequate legal protection however, this may soon change.
With Treasure hunters already looting, plundering and abusing the under water heritage of some of our Caribbean neighbors like the Bahamas in the case of Nuestra senora de las Maravillas, there is no telling when this will start happening in St. Kitts and Nevis with our wrecks and artifacts.
A concerted and coordinated effort by all will be required to reduce the risk of our heritage disappearing at the hands of treasure hunters.
A couple ways to start the protection process according to the Director of Maritime Affairs McClean Hobson is the urgent ratification of the 2001 Under Water Cultural Heritage Convention and the continuation of St. Kitts Maritime archeological project started in white house bay in 2003 to identify and record all the wrecks and artifacts in the waters of St.Kitts and those in Nevis.
This he opined following the conclusion of a UNESCO sponsored seminar held in St.Lucia over the period March 27-28, 2008 for the Sub-regional countries and Barbados in combination with a new set of regulations will certainly help to provide the required level of legal protection to safe guard our under water treasures.
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Caribbean under-water treasures being looted
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The UNESCO UNDER WATER CULTURAL HERITAGE CONVENTION was adopted in 2001 to help all states to protect their under water cultural heritage.
Some benefits of the convention are that states will be able to take common action against illegal recovery and trafficking of cultural property and have the possibility to help each other by seizing under water cultural heritage in their territories that has been recovered by looters in a manner not in conformity with the 2001 convention, provides practical guidelines to under water archaeologists and heritage managements services on how to research under water cultural heritage and create a common approach to protecting under water cultural heritage.
~~Adz:Left~~
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