Cultural Heritage Protection as a Humanitarian Imperative in Ukraine
During times of war and strife, domestic governments, international organizations, and NGOs turn to fund immediate humanitarian needs for affected populations. When it comes to funding during wartime, however, there is one sector that is consistently overlooked: cultural institutions and the arts. The Ukrainian state has over 140,000 registered monuments and objects of immovable cultural heritage. As of October 2023, the World Monuments Fund has documented 835 instances of destruction or damage to museums and cultural heritage sites due to the Russian invasion. [1] Ukraine’s system of cultural heritage protection has undergone a profound transformation during four years of full-scale war, arguably creating a shift from a cultural preservation concern to a humanitarian priority. This paper argues that existing international legal protections and emergency funding mechanisms are structurally inadequate for prolonged conflict. Cultural heritage protection must shift from a reactive model toward sustained, multilateral funding structures integrated into humanitarian policy.
However, the past few years have shown that existing international legal protections and emergency funding mechanisms remain structurally insufficient for prolonged conflict. According to an extensive report on policy frameworks for Ukrainian heritage funding, informal means of support for cultural sites have flooded into Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2022, while funding structures from the Ukrainian government, the EU, and UNESCO have remained fragmented or delayed. [2] Between private donors and NGOs, funding remains present, but infrequent. These issues can potentially be alleviated if there is a shift in the legal position of cultural heritage protection from a reactionary framework to a sustained structure of funding for wartime. In practice, this would entail mandating long-term multilateral funding mechanisms (not only emergency grants and allowance of private donation) and legal integration of cultural heritage into humanitarian budgets in addition to existing support from outside sources.
Prior to the full-scale invasion, Ukraine possessed a formal system of cultural heritage protection grounded in both domestic regulation and international legal instruments. This includes the 1954 Hague Convention, the convention’s subsequent Second Protocol, and UNESCO-administered protection mechanisms. [3] Yet despite these extensive legal frameworks, regimes of cultural protection were designed primarily to respond to identifiable damage and facilitate preservation or reconstruction, rather than to sustain cultural systems under prolonged conditions of warfare. The Stirling report found that after the first year of the war, cultural workers and museum staff in Ukraine received less support from state funding sources. It also noted skepticism about UNESCO’s ability to protect cultural heritage during wartime, since its application process is lengthy and evaluated on a case-by-case basis. International legal protection has therefore functioned largely as a reactive framework, emphasizing monitoring and post-conflict recovery. Political regimes of cultural protection are often reactive, preservation-focused, and limited as opposed to preventative and long-term, posing a threat to sites during times of continuous and protracted war. [4]
When heritage supports recovery for struggling communities, failing to fund it creates inherent humanitarian risk. This is applicable to any regions recovering or experiencing the horrors of conflict, and is particularly relevant to conflict in Ukraine, where types of sites ranging from historical state archives to thousand year old churches are in direct exposure to Russian bombing and subsequent fire. Professor of cultural heritage policy Diána Vonnák cites a particular instance where state legal protections failed to provide sufficient protection for museum and cultural heritage workers in the Donbas region: According to Vonnák, in February of 2022, the lack of an autonomous legal mandate for officials at territorial administrations and museum directors to take action prevented effective evacuation efforts and protection measures, leaving local museum artifacts at heightened risk of shelling. [5] It is evident that failure to fund protection for cultural heritage can be characterized as a humanitarian policy failure, not merely a cultural one, and current legal protections emphasize designation and condemnation as opposed to sustained preservation. While international law often defines various obligations, it does not finance them, and current emergency funding is predominately reactive and project-based, with short grant cycles and dependence on donors. Underfunding produces the delayed harm of erosion of cultural continuity and reduced public access to heritage. Heritage destruction is not only physical loss, but should be considered as social infrastructure collapse.
With Ukraine as a case study, it is clear that prolonged war requires a shift from emergency response mechanisms to sustainable governance that funds heightened protection for arts and culture. Long-term multilateral funding mechanisms instead of emergency grants, as well as the integration of heritage into humanitarian budgets are two avenues to achieve sustained protection. Cultural heritage protection is not secondary to recovery and social resilience, but it is a precondition for it, and should be legally and financially protected as such. The current state of Ukraine is an example of this concept unfolding in real time, and this is particularly crucial when across the West, governments continue to reduce funding for foreign cultural preservation, solely prioritising defense expenditure. As an example, recent cuts by the U.S. Department of State to foreign aid impacted major cultural operators, stripping ALIPH of a $645,000 grant set aside for Ukraine. [6] Overall, Ukraine lacks heightened domestic and multilateral legal protections that are necessary to fund cultural heritage and museums during an era of protracted war. As foreign aid support continues to decline, and grassroots mechanisms and private donations remain present but limited, new legal and financial frameworks are required to ensure sustained protection for museums and heritage artifacts.
Edited by Taran Srikonda
Endnotes
[1] World Monuments Fund, “Ukraine Heritage Response Fund,” accessed February 21, 2026, https://www.wmf.org/programs/ukraine-heritage-response-fund
[2] Dániel Vonnák, Sarah Jones, Jakob Rasmussen, and Sophie Hardy, Mobilising Care for Cultural Heritage in Russia’s War Against Ukraine (Stirling: University of Stirling, 2025), https://doi.org/10.34722/n9m2-tv84.
[3] United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Second Protocol to the Hague Convention of 1954 for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict: Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, Second Extraordinary Meeting, Paris, UNESCO Headquarters, 18 March 2022: The Granting of Enhanced Protection to Cultural Properties in Ukraine (Paris: UNESCO, 2022).
[4] Evelien Campfens, Andrzej Jakubowski, Kristin Hausler, and Elke Selter, Protecting Cultural Heritage from Armed Conflicts in Ukraine and Beyond (Brussels: European Parliament, Policy Department for Structural and Cohesion Policies, 2023).
[5] Diána Vonnák, “‘This Happened to Us for the Second Time’: War-preparedness, Risk, Responsibility and the Evacuation of Donbas Museums in 2022,” Museum & Society 21, no. 2 (July 2023): 4–16.
[6] Andrew Dearman, “Too Little, Too Late? Funding for Cultural Heritage Protection during Armed Conflict,” Center for Art Law – At the Intersection of Visual Arts and the Law, January 5, 2026, https://itsartlaw.org/art-law/too-little-too-late-funding-for-cultural-heritage-protection-during-armed-conflict/