India and the U.S. on July 26 signed a cultural property agreement aimed at enhancing cooperation to protect cultural heritage of the two countries.
- The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the 46th World Heritage Committee being hosted by India this time.
- Cultural property agreements prevent the illegal trade of cultural property and simplify the process by which looted and stolen antiquities may be returned to their country of origin.
- With this agreement, India joins the ranks of 29 existing U.S. bilateral cultural property agreement partners.
- The Cultural Property Agreement (CPA) is aligned with the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the “Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, to which both countries are parties.”
- India has repatriated 358 antiquities since 1976; out of these, 345 have been retrieved since 2014, mostly from the US.
