Kingston, 28 June 2024 – The Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport is engaging customs officials in the fight against the illegal trafficking of cultural property.

Speaking at the close of two training workshops for Customs Officers in Montego Bay, St James on Thursday, the Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, the Honourable Olivia Grange, said the customs officials had a critical role to play in preventing the pilferage of artefacts for the lucrative and illicit export of cultural properties.

“Jamaica wants to be part of the network of countries preventing the movement of objects across our borders illegally. We want to see permitted movement only through effective regulatory actions such as export certificates,” said Minister Grange.

The Minister explained that the engagement of customs professionals, as well as the security forces was part of the Government’s multi-pronged approach to protecting Jamaica’s material cultural heritage both inside and outside our borders.

The Government is also working to amend the Jamaica National Heritage Trust Act to address trade in cultural material. Additionally, the Government is looking to ratify two international conventions that deal with the illicit trafficking of cultural heritage, namely, the Unesco Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects.

The Conventions support each other. The UNESCO Convention, in establishing a framework for international cooperation, takes preventive measures against illicit trade of declared/designated cultural property and imposes provisions for the return/restitution to the place of origin. And the UNIDROIT Convention underpins the provision of the UNESCO Convention in the area of return and restitution of cultural objects.

This week’s workshops with Customs Officers is part of a continuing process, which began in 2018, to sensitise stakeholders about the conventions and the imminent amendments to the law.

The Senior Director at the Jamaica Customs Agency, Claudette Coombs McHayle, said the training had given her team “the ammunition… to secure the border and ensure that our heritage is protected [and] our culture is preserved because when we do that not only are we preserving our generational legacy but we are also preserving our tangible legacy.”

Minister Grange said the new legislative and regulatory environment would prevent a recurrence of pilferage of heritage sites that has taken place at Port Royal, Fort Haldane, Chancery Hall and Bowden over time; as well “jump start the repatriation of Jamaican artefacts that are part of foreign collections”.

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