Rights, wrongs and remedies - Working towards colonial heritage repatriation legislation for Belgium

de Clippele, Marie-Sophie [USL-B] Demarsin, Bert [KULeuven]

This paper aims to take stock of the current Belgian position on the repatriation of artefacts stolen or illegally exported under the colonial rule. First, the authors set the stage by briefly discussing Belgian colonial history, which lead to an influx in Belgian (museum) collections of various types of cultural artefacts. Consequently, the paper addresses the current Belgian context of (legal) pitfalls and societal challenges that hinder the repatriation of colonial heritage to the country’s former colonies. Here, the paper takes an obvious comparative slant as it tries to determine the Belgian position in the restitution debate in relation to its neighboring countries and other former colonial powers. In order to further the case of repatriation of (looted) colonial heritage, the second part of the paper embarks on a constructive path as the authors present a draft bill as a scholarly initiative to (formally) streamline all repatriation efforts of colonial heritage from Belgian public collections. In doing so the authors will comment on the strategic and operational choices made during the drafting process regarding important aspects such as the (geographical, material and temporal) scope of the legislation, the interaction between the federation and the federated entities, the procedural flow, the heritage selection process, the political responsibility, the rights of third parties and museological and documentarist concerns (archives, digitization,…). As a matter of conclusion, the authors will look ahead and briefly reflect on the parliamentary process that lies ahead of the draft bill and its likeliness to be signed into law.