ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, 1 August 2022 -/African Media Agency/- BonelliErede, a leading international law firm, and Italia Africa Business Week , a commercial and business forum whose goal is to facilitate sharing economic, commercial and financial knowledge between Africa and Italy, recently held a webinar on the restitution of cultural property to African states. It was…
Manlio Frigo and Jean Louis Touadi spoke at length about how to tackle the different issues surrounding the restitution of cultural heritage and possible solutions on how to move forward in a way that is fair to everyone. They also mentioned that this is merely the beginning of an extremely important international discussion about what physical and non-physical return, including the dignity aspect, can and should be about, and what role Italy can and should play.
· Belgium: It has adopted a law to establish criteria for returning goods resulting from colonialism – the first country to regulate restitution. However, an agreement needs to be reached between Belgium and other countries and African states concerning the transfer of ownership and the physical transfer of goods.
· The African continent, in a framework of what was called the civilisation mission, was subjected to the same fate by anthropologists and ethnologists, who made no effort to understand the realities they were dealing with. · The West, despite its power, was unable to annihilate African culture or impose the Western model.