In the last decade, however, the country has seen increased looting of its cultural heritage by terrorist organizations and local militias. Since 2007, the United States has upheld an agreement with Mali to protect cultural property. Malian regulations require that anyone seeking to export artifacts submit the objects for certification by the National Museum. Their final destination will be museums, “including the National Museum of Mali in the capital, Bamako,” he added. He explained that the artifacts, which were handed over to diplomats on Monday, would be immediately returned to Mali, where the country’s Ministry of Culture would assess them. authorities notified the Malian government about the return of the looted artifacts this year and that repatriation negotiations then resumed. “We considered these objects as part of our history that was not present anymore.”
“We put a great deal of care into culture,” Mohamed Traore, an adviser with Mali’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, said in an interview. In June 2020, the State Department provided Mali with a grant to finance the return of the artifacts and their eventual exhibition there. In 2011, the United States started the process of returning the artifacts to Mali, but the effort paused when the West African country fell into a period of civil unrest and economic strain, Homeland Security officials said. Susan McIntosh, an anthropologist at Rice University, researched the antiquities and released a report later that year. Upon inspection, the items appeared to be authentic. The container originated in Mali with papers claiming that it held reproductions of cultural items. Customs and Border Protection alerted the investigative branch of Homeland Security of a suspicious container at the port. The artifacts’ journey began in March 2009 when U.S. Mark Dawson, the investigator who oversaw the search, said in a statement Monday that “a nation’s cultural property and antiquities define who they are as a people.” He added: “No one has the right to loot or destroy that heritage and history.” Homeland Security agents would “aggressively target anyone who pilfers the priceless cultural treasures of a nation,” according to the statement. Officials described the discovery at the port, which is one of the busiest in the country, as the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack. Homeland Security agents originally confiscated the items, which included ceremonial and mortuary objects, some dating back to the Neolithic period, at the Port of Houston in 2009. More than 900 artifacts intercepted in an illegal shipment have been returned to the government of Mali, U.S.
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