The Protection Of The Underwater Cultural Heritage

Madagascar’s surrounding waters retain numbers of shipwrecks, both recent and historical. The advance of technology will certainly help to discover even more historical shipwrecks, and with that will come the threat of these heritages exposed to looting. As by the provisions of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage of 2001, most of these shipwrecks are considered as Underwater Cultural Heritage, and therefore need a specific protection regime. Such protection should take place within the framework drawn by the UNESCO Convention, which is the first comprehensive international instrument on the protection of maritime cultural property, alongside with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, together with the national legislation on shipwrecks as it is in Madagascar’s Maritime Code.