Transcription
I want to thank you, uh, all, uh, organizers of this, uh, conference, uh, to let me present the military side, uh, of cultural property protection. Um, first of all, we will change our point of view this afternoon. Also, I will give you the French point of view and the French military point of view in cultural property protection. And first of all, I want to remind you that, that as military, as officers, as people, as people involved in military operations, we are not IND agents. So, my first mission as cultural property protection officers is not to preserve the World Treasures. My first task is to gain military success for my commanders, and this is a point of view I want to share with you, uh, this afternoon. Uh, so we are not IND andur, we are military, and therefore, you will see some differences with the civilian side of cultural property protection, uh, you are this morning.
So, first of all, um, I'm really glad, uh, to be part of the French army and to be a curator of the, of the French Foreign Legion. And we are lucky because for more than 100 years, the French army has a specific unit dedicated to cultural property protection. If we fail doing one to pro, to protect, um, our, our monuments, our museums, our collections in France, with, we really rapidly, at the end of World War I, developed a specific unit, only with military personnel, to be dedicated to the protection and the preservation of artworks. We had this unit during World War I, but we also had this unit, this unite during World War II. And because we prepare during, during, uh, peace time, just before World War II, we were able to protect more than 400 buildings when World War II started in France. But also, uh, until the late 70s, we had specific military personnel dedicated to this, to this work. Since 30 years now, we are lucky to have a specific branch of the army, a specific specialty, which is military curators. So, we are almost more than 40 officers dedicated to the, to this mission today within the French army. Those officers have both backgrounds. They went to the military academy, but they also went to the e or to the National Curator School in Paris. So, they have both backgrounds, and their mission is also to preserve, to protect, to develop, and, uh, to participate in the valorization of the French military collections.
Uh, as you can see, um, our, our centralized office in Paris, stat, the French army general staff office for cultural heritage, um, manages many museums, big collections, also Army artists. And one part of this task is also to be involved in cultural property protection and also the implementation of the 1954 Hague convention. I want, I want to to show you our organization, so which is, which is really new. Um, we, as we had during World War I and World War II, we have a centralized office, uh, at the Joint Chief, uh, as a Joint Chief of Staff level, which is a committee of five generals who are in charge officially of this task. Those, this committee is the Military Committee for Cultural Heritage. Can also task A GPP, a specific group for cultural property protection. This group consists for every mission of one Army curator, but also sometime we can't do anything alone, and we need other specialists. And therefore, we can ask other specialists, other military specialists to help us, to advise us, and to support our mission in cultural property protection. As you can see, we can task many specialists. We can, we can task simic, we can task legard, military firefighters, intelligence officer, etc., etc. Sometime, it's not enough to achieve our goals, and therefore, we have the ability to task civilian experts. Alone, the military alone can't do, can do everything. We need civilian specialists, civilian curators to advise us. Sometimes, because I'm not an architect, if I need some advice from an an architect from E building, I know because we have the network, we, we are participating in many conferences, I can, I can ask them for support. But also sometimes, we also need, whoop, sorry, we also need to, uh, to talk with, uh, our foreign partners, our military part in other armies.
Al today, our job as cultural property protection officers consists in five main tasks, as you can see. So, we are really lucky to get, to get in July 2021 specific orders from The Joint Chief of Staff to, um, to develop a cultural property protection policy and doctrine. And therefore, we are about now to also to develop training. First, to develop awareness at the military academy, in military schools for NCOs, because they are the, they are the leaders for the next generation. If we can, if we can speak about cultural property protection when there are young lieutenants, maybe when they will be generals, they will remind that cultural property protection is a topic. Also, we have specific training for specialists, for legal advisors, for semic, for every specialist you saw before. But also, like this conference, uh, we are part in a, um, in a daily training for our curators. Um, and also slowly, many other branches of the army ask to include a CPP presentation within their own presentation, which is a small victory for us because now CPP is a topic, and they want to develop this topic in their own specialty.
Also, what, what are we doing? We also, every time we can, we are developing training exercises, and in every exercise, we want that CPP could be a topic. And we propose also, if you put a blue shield on a map, this made cultural heritage alive, also alive for military commanders. And from this first step, then you can develop some ideas, some scenarios based on cultural property protection. Also, for every, every question related to CPP, now the Ministry of the AR, of the Armed Forces in France, now in which office with people they can ask to to get technical answers to their issues. Also, the use of the Blue Shield is only a small thing, but it's always a good opportunity to speak about this mission of cultural property protection. Every time we can put a Blue Shield, we put a blue shield on, uh, urban warfare centers training. We can put a blue shield and we can develop scenarios, we can engage officers, we can engage soldiers, uh, when they have to develop, um, um, a tactical exercise on the field.
Also, our, our goals, our spirit is not to reinvent the wheel, but it's also to use the mil, the military equipment for a cultural property protection operation. That means recently, we developed a 3D scanning, a military 3D scanning. We adapt it for CPP purpose. It's not to de, to to explain our military commanders that we have civilian, um, we have civilian equipment and we need to adapt it for the, for the military. We do, we do the opposite. We, we use the military equipment for CP purpose. Also, direct support to every operation is a, is a common goal for every, every curator. But also, we are the ability because we are 40 active duty personnel, and for some of them, it's their only task is to be a cultural property protection officer. That means it's quite easy for us to deploy them on the field. Within two days, we can be sent everywhere in the world. In the past four years, we were deployed in several operations in Mari, in Chad, in Estonia, in Romania, for examples, also in Senegal, and we, we were conducting, um, some tasks directly related to cultural property protection.
Also, what can we do? We can do direct support to our commanders to explain what is the cultural environment of the field, or can we use it for the benefit of the operations? Also, can we, can we train? Can we give awareness about what is protected in the area of the operations? Can we engage with the military police to raise awareness about the fight against illicit trafficking? Yes, we can. Also, can we engage in semic? Can we be engaged in semic operations, uh, like we did in, uh, Central, Central African Republic, sorry, to help restore, uh, the national museums? Yes, we can. And we can engage with the local community, we can engage with the local authorities because it's not our own cultural property. So, we are no more in the 19th century. And every time when we are engaged in such operations, we, we will with the local authorities and with the local communities. We can give awareness to the troops.
Uh, you see one picture in Estonia. It was, um, training, training exercise, field, and there was some protected cultural property. If nobody knows that it's protected, it's forgotten. It's part of our job to, to be there and to explain why it is important for those artifacts to be protected. Also, what can we do? We can also raise awareness to the troops. When we are in a camp in Mali, we can create an exhibition to explain to the soldiers that the Malian does have a cultural history, they does have a cultural heritage. We can create a small exhibition for them to discover some world heritage sites 3 kilometers from the camp they will never see. This is also part of our job. Also, to record any cultural property in our, our area of responsibility, to, to know what is protected, to get lists of cultural sites is also really important. And also collaborations with NGOs, with local authorities, with other military, with other counterparts, with our, our allies is also part of our job.
That means, if you look, uh, from the civilian side of cultural property protection, we have another, another point of view. Our point of view is the military point of view. Therefore, we need to have specific missions. Our goal is not to protect cultural property, to protect cultural property does mean anything for me. I want to have specific tasks. What can I do? I can inform, I can, I can advise, I can support. This is not the same thing, and we can adapt all those missions for a C, for cultural property protection. Also, because alone, we can't do anything. We are having a really rich, uh, engagement with other ministries in France, with the Ministry of Cultures, with the Ministry of Interiors, uh, because it's always good to have collaboration with experts.
Uh, it's also important to engage with the scientific community, with the cultural heritage community, and also to engage with the academic world. It's really important for us to give courses at the university, to give courses at the E, to train the next generation of military and civilians. Also, to train, uh, to train young, young people at, uh, at school to explain that what is cultural property, what is a cultural heritage, why is it important, why is it important to have a civil-military collaboration in this task.
Also, it's really important also to engage on the national level, but also on an international level. For us, four years ago, when I had my first meeting at UNESCO, it was, I was in uniform. It was really tricky because I wanted to speak about the 1954 Hague Convention, you know, convention in the event of armed conflict. When we had the N, the general assembly, there was no military in the room. We fill this gap. Also, from the French, uh, part, because we don't, we don't have the same point of view, and it's maybe better to have military to speak with UNESCO, to speak with UN, to speak with every of every international bodies engaged in cultural property protection in the event of of armed conflict, as to let civilians to, to say to the, to the military what they have to do. It will never work. Therefore, for us, it's like to be a small bridge between the civilian part and the military part to be better for our common task for cultural property protection.
It's also always rich, which really rich, um, to share with, uh, our allies, uh, with, uh, other military. Uh, today, you have more than, I think, between 30 and 40 countries who have a specific military, uh, military unit or military personnel specialized in cultural property protection. When we share with them, when we share with our US colleagues, with our British colleagues, our colleagues from Netherlands, we always learn something because we don't have the same history, and also the same task in our own, uh, uh, in our own development of the implementation of the 1954 Hague convention. Therefore, I'm really glad to, uh, the organizers of this conference to let, uh, this story continue, and, uh, also to discover all of you. We'll have some, some some time today, but also, uh, this made the part of our job to engage with you, and also to learn your projects, to learn how do you deal, uh, when you are confronted in a, in a specific issue related to cultural property protection in operations. So, and therefore, I'm, I'm really glad. So, thank you for your attention, and feel free, feel free to ask any questions, uh, during the next, uh, break. Coffee break. Thank you. [Applause]