Report calling for return of stolen art a landmark moment for Pacific - lawyer

Transcript

Paz Zarate: I think further discussions will be on making small adjustment to internal policies of museums or how museums interpret their own statutes and regulations. For example concerning laws. Because we are not - especially in other countries, not in France. In France this is going to be huge, because the proposal is for amendment of the ... so France's internal law regulating heritage. And knowing the French that will be a very tough debate and Macron is very brave to go ahead with this since his opinion poll numbers are not very good at the moment and he's still going ahead with this campaign promise. But then outside of France, this report will certainly give courage to those countries that have made claims and those countries that are considering making friendly claims and will drive internal reassessment at the level of the top museums around the world, that is for sure. And so when internal policies are up for review, this will be one issue - should we be more generous? The first measures probably would be law in policy. And then later - also this would be the public pressure probably driving this too - there would be a study of should we amend our legislation. That would be the next step, and this is a slow process. But I think the first measures we are going to see are reassessments of law in policy, that's how I think this will start. 

Mackenzie Smith: You're talking about the Macron report which is in relation to African countries, but you're saying this could be used by countries outside of Africa who have had artefacts stolen over the years. You're saying it's going to have a ripple effect?

PZ: The true interest in Polynesia and all the other islands would be looking at the consequences of the Macron report and how this could be transposed or applied to the Pacific at a very important level. And this conversation inevitably will start."