I "Caschi Blu della Cultura": l'iniziativa italiana a protezione del patrimonio culturale mondiale

The initiative aimed at the creation of the so-called Blue Helmets for Culture, which has been vigorously promoted by Italy, origins from the need to provide an adequate response to the many offences inflicted to the world cultural heritage, especially in these recent years. Firstly, by retracing the essential landmarks of the juridical development of the new doctrine of cultural peacekeeping, the paper provides a critical analysis of the legitimacy of the initiative that aims at conferring a cultural mandate to ONU peacekeeping missions. Secondly, the paper investigates Italy’s contribution to the world cultural heritage protection, achieved through the creation of the Task Force Unite4Heritage: the discussion of the peculiar competencies and capacities of the Italian Task Force is focused on verifying whether this Italian initiative could effectively have an impact on the various efforts of the International Community in order to safeguard endangered cultural heritage. In this way, the Italian contribution could be an example to other States for an adequate response to the new challenges presented by an artistic and cultural heritage strongly at risk.