Marie-Sophie de Clippele writes:
The United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have enacted specific legislation primarily focused on the internal repatriation of human remains belonging to their indigenous populations.
Beyond the settler-colony context, a new wave of legislations has been adopted, mostly focused on colonial heritage and sometimes also on human remains. France has for instance recently enacted a general repatriation law for human remains in public collections.
Belgium has adopted a general law for the restitution of colonial collections in its federal museums, a pioneering framework which however explicitly excludes human remains, even if a draft bill on forbidding the sale of human remains is currently being discussed.
On the other side of the spectrum, notably in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a Decree has been adopted to create a national commission on the restitution and reconstitution of cultural objects, human remains and archives.
In contrast, other countries, such as Germany, The Netherlands or Switzerland, adhere to museum-related policies at the national or local level, encompassing recommendations from museums and academia rather than parliamentary bills, which can however equally be effective in guiding repatriation efforts.
