“Internally driven institutional reforms have been slow and inconsistent. It’s time for government to lead, establishing robust legal frameworks to ensure the dignified treatment and rightful return of these remains.”
The report recommends:
- changes to both law and to museums directly. It argues that museums should change internal policies to remove requirements or recommendations that claims for return should be made through a national government or government agency.
- that the UK government should ensure that the board of trustees of national museums include representatives from diasporic civil society organisations, and that DCMS should establish an independent Human Remains Advisory Panel, following the model of the UK Spoliation Advisory Panel.
- the removal of any distinctions between the return of human remains, modified human remains, as well as cultural material, and that source communities should determine what falls within the definition of ‘ancestral remains’.
