LENS Essay Series: “Special Protection, Strategic Use: Cultural Property in the Law of Armed Conflict”
Can the protection normally given to cultural property by the law of armed conflict be instrumentalized by belligerents in a way not intended by the law’s drafters? If so, can anything be done about it? Today, the newest contributor to the LENS Essay Series, Yuyan (Nicole) Zhang, tackles those challenging questions and more.
Her essay, “Special Protection, Strategic Use: Cultural Property in the Law of Armed Conflict,” unpacks the issues in a remarkable, fresh, and innovative piece of well-researched scholarship. What is more, she offers recommendations that are genuinely workable yet keep the balance between humanitarian concerns and military necessity.
Abstract
Cultural property occupies a unique place in armed conflict: it embodies identity, history, and collective memory, but it can also be drawn into the strategic calculations of war. This paper examines a structural tension at the heart of the legal regime governing cultural property in armed conflict.
While the law of armed conflict (LOAC) aspires to safeguard cultural objects, its reliance on indeterminate standards and broad normative commitments renders it vulnerable to instrumentalization by adversaries. Cultural protection is not merely a matter of compliance or violation; rather, it is embedded within the operational dynamics of warfare, where legal terms are invoked, contested, and strategically deployed. As a result, concepts such as “cultural value” can be stretched to justify military advantage, whether through overdesignation of protected sites, opportunistic military use, or rhetorical framing in propaganda.
This paper argues that this tension stems from issues embedded in legal design. The LOAC frameworks that depend on good-faith assertions and open-ended balancing tests lack sufficient structure to constrain the application and assessment of cultural claims in practice. In response, this paper proposes four recommendations: clarifying criteria for determining cultural significance, recalibrating evidentiary presumptions in cases involving military use of cultural sites, disaggregating harms within proportionality analyses, and requiring substantiated claims when invoking cultural protection.
Again, you can find Nicole’s paper here.
About the Author
Yuyan (Nicole) Zhang graduated with a J.D. and an LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from Duke University School of Law in May 2026. She also holds an LL.B. from Peking University Law School in China. Her research focuses on international criminal law, international human rights law, comparative law, and legal theory.
Her work has appeared in the Michigan Journal of International Law (2026), University of Pennsylvania Asian Law Review (2026), and Virginia Journal of International Law Online (2025).
At Duke, she was an Articles Editor for Volume 75 of the Duke Law Journal, a research assistant for Professors Laurence R. Helfer, Mara R. Revkin, and Shitong Qiao, and a legal extern with the Supreme Court Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Nicole will begin her LL.M. study at Yale Law School in the fall 2026.
Remember what we like to say on Lawfire®: gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself!
