When Cultural Heritage Becomes Diplomacy
In New York, a high-level gathering led by Ghana brought presidents, ministers and international institutions together around one of cultural diplomacy’s most difficult questions: what happens when heritage taken from a people is asked to return home?
NEW YORK — September 23, 2026
On the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly, an unusually consequential cultural conversation unfolded away from the General Assembly Hall. It was not simply about museums, collections or the ownership of historic objects. It was about memory, identity, diplomacy; and the unfinished histories connecting Africa, Europe and the wider world. Ghana convened the high-level side event “From Commitments to Action on Reparatory Justice: Advancing International Cooperation for the Return and Restitution of Cultural Properties and Heritage” in New York on September 23, co-hosted by Germany and France.
At its center was Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, who used his keynote address to argue that the debate over restitution cannot be reduced to objects displayed behind museum glass. For generations, significant parts of Africa’s cultural memory have existed far from the communities that produced them; whether sacred objects, royal treasures, archives or human remains. His central argument was that restitution therefore concerns not simply legal possession, but the relationship between cultural heritage, historical memory and human dignity.
Mahama presented several areas in which the international conversation could move from acknowledgment toward implementation. He pointed to progress already made through individual restitution agreements, including initiatives involving Ghana and European countries, while arguing that individual returns, however significant, do not themselves constitute an international system. Ghana is calling for clearer mechanisms through the United Nations and UNESCO, greater transparency in provenance research, improved access to archives and fewer legal and diplomatic barriers surrounding restitution. Particular emphasis was also placed on the return of African human remains.
The discussion also addressed a question frequently raised in restitution debates: whether museums and institutions in countries of origin possess sufficient facilities for conservation and security. Rather than allowing infrastructure limitations to become a justification for retaining cultural property indefinitely, Mahama argued for investment in African museums, archives, conservation laboratories, digitization and professional expertise. The distinction is important. It moves the debate away from a choice between returning heritage and protecting heritage toward a different possibility: international cooperation capable of accomplishing both.
There is also an economic dimension. Cultural heritage does not exist separately from development. Museums, historic sites, archives and collections can contribute to education, scholarship, tourism and the creative economy. A returned object does not necessarily complete a story; it can begin another one. What museum will display it? Who will conserve it? What new scholarship might develop around it? Will travelers come to see it? Can craftspeople, designers, historians, filmmakers and educators reinterpret the history surrounding it? In this sense, cultural heritage can become intellectual, institutional and, in some circumstances, economic capital.
Liberian President Joseph Nyuma Boakai, who participated in the gathering, brought a practical dimension to the conversation by proposing a Liberia–Ghana framework for cultural heritage and historical recovery. The areas envisioned include digitizing historical records, training archivists and museum professionals, researching and preserving historic sites, and developing exhibitions and educational programs. His proposal illustrates how the restitution conversation is gradually expanding beyond the question of whether an object will return. Increasingly, another question follows: What happens after it returns?
Answering it requires curators, historians, conservators, archivists, universities, cultural ministries, museums and other institutions capable of transforming recovered heritage into living knowledge.
For much of modern history, cultural diplomacy has often been associated with exchange: exhibitions traveling abroad, orchestras crossing borders, artists participating in residencies and museums lending masterpieces to one another. Restitution introduces a different form of cultural diplomacy. Instead of asking countries to share what they possess, it can ask them to reconsider why they possess it in the first place. These conversations can be legally complicated, historically sensitive and politically contested, and there is no single history behind every disputed object or collection. Yet the gathering in New York demonstrated that the question of restitution has moved decisively into international diplomacy.
For FQM, that may be the most significant lesson. Culture can connect countries through beauty, scholarship and exchange. But culture can also require countries to confront difficult histories together. Sometimes an object crossing a border in the opposite direction from a museum collection back toward its place of origin can become an act of diplomacy in its own right.
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