“The postponement of the promised law is a shock for us” | EUROtoday

En November 2017, on the University of Ouagadougou, President Emmanuel Macron stated: “I want that, within five years, the conditions will be met for temporary or definitive restitution of African heritage in Africa. » Following the struggles waged by peoples dispossessed for decades, this declaration, followed by the Sarr-Savoy report in 2018, raised great hope on the African continent, in particular French-speaking countries, some of whose greatest treasures are found in France since the colonial conquests.

In December 2020, France passed a law which allowed the repatriation of some treasures to Benin and Senegal. In 2023, after the adoption of two restitution laws relating respectively to the property of dispossessed Jewish families and to human remains, we followed with great hope and attention the legislative project concerning property taken from colonized peoples.

By means of ambitious cultural policies, the construction or renovation of museums and the strengthening of their heritage institutions, our countries were preparing to joyfully welcome the return of their heritage to the native land. Benin is building in its capital, Porto Novo, an international vodun museum, already awarded for its architecture, where the famous statue of the god Gou is expected.

Series of vices

The postponement of the promised law is a shock for us. The legitimate criticisms of the Council of State on the bill prepared by the French government, revealed by “Le Monde”, spotlight a collection of vices. The Council of State notes that this invoice contravenes a basic precept: the exit from public area should be motivated by a superior public curiosity, by a compelling purpose, which alone can discovered a derogation from the inalienability of public collections .

However, the invoice solely targets the “conduct of international relations and cultural cooperation” ; which can’t represent an overriding public curiosity. This sample is immediately impressed by the report Shared heritage: universality, restitution and circulation of artistic endeavors, postponed in 2023, which isn’t in settlement with the speech given by President Macron in 2017 in Ouagadougou. If cultural cooperation with France, as with different international locations, is pricey to us, it can’t change the necessity to rediscover our heritage.

In 1978, Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, then director normal of UNESCO, wrote: “These destitute women and men are additionally demanding that a minimum of essentially the most consultant artwork treasures of their tradition be returned to them, these to which they connect essentially the most significance, these whose absence is psychologically distressing to them. , essentially the most insupportable. This declare is legit. » Is not the cultural curiosity of peoples a compelling purpose, a superior normal curiosity?

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