The group, which is chaired by the Labour MP for Clapham & Brixton Hill, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, urged the UK museum sector and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to come up with “a genuinely ethical and accountable way forward” to resolve the issue of human remains in British museums.
The group wants to see ancestral humans remains repatriated, particularly when explicit requests have been made by descendants or source communities.
Labour peer Paul Boateng said the continued failure to fulfil such requests was “an affront to humanity and an affront to basic human dignity which has got to end”.
An estimated 50% of all human remains in the UK are held in orphaned collections or warehouses throughout the country, the briefing heard, with much of their provenance unknown.
Many of the remains kept by museums would have been obtained by “theft and deceit” – removed from cemeteries, claimed from colonial battlefields, or taken from relatives under duress – according to Janet Ulph, the emeritus professor of law at the University of Leicester.
Current DCMS guidance states that “the laws of England and Wales do not recognise the concept of property, ie a right of ownership in human bodies and tissue, except where remains have been treated or altered through the application of skill”.
Ulph explained that this clause stems from legal rulings specifically regarding the use of human body parts in anatomical studies.
However, the exception has been historically used by archaeologists and museums to claim that human remains taken as part of Britain’s wider colonial project have been modified in some way, and can therefore be classed as artefacts.
