Contested Heritage. A multilevel analysis of the securitization of heritage and its challenges for EU and UN actorness (COHERE)

Summary: In recent years, Eastern Europe has been confronted with new forms of heritage policies. European and international organizations tend to focus on the opportunities of heritage diplomacy for the European Neighbourhood region, yet more recently, several researchers have identified the phenomenon of the securitization of heritage. In times of conflict, states and organizations turn cultural heritage into an object of security through discursive actions. This is currently the case in Central and Eastern Europe, where Ukrainian, Estonian, Czech and Russian parties contest and claim heritage by disseminating security narratives. What are the challenges for the European Union and the United Nations as actors of heritage diplomacy in cases of conflict?This research project intends to evaluate EU and UN actions when faced with serious challenges for heritage diplomacy, in this case state-led securitization that targets common history and shared heritage with other states. The overall goal of this pilot study is to prepare an analytical framework to assess EU and UN actorness that can strengthen the field of research but also provide the organizations with new ways of dealing with these challenges. Follow-up research will focus on implementing the results of this pilot study in collaboration with organizations on the ground and in other conflict areas. In this project, we will focus on three cases in Ukraine, Estonia and the Czech Republic during which the aforementioned challenges but also opportunities for heritage diplomacy have occurred. The COHERE consortium will analyse EU and UN actorness in these cases of conflicting heritage claims in Crimea, decommunization laws in Ukraine that target unwanted heritage, and the use of sharp power as a new Russian diplomatic policy tool to reinforce memory politics in Estonia and the Czech Republic. Despite the abundant discourse on heritage diplomacy, these cases offer an opportunity to test the link between EU’s and UN’s discourses and actorness, with specific attention for the EU-UN dynamics in this process.

Keywords:Central and Eastern Europe, international politics, international law, heritage diplomacy, history of decommunization

Disciplines:World history, Critical heritage, Diplomacy, International law