Cultural Restitution
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Updated July 2024
Below is a schedule of successful restitutions made by Belgium to a country or community of source, together with other restitution news. Entries are updated regularly.
July 2024
Director of Belgium's AfricaMuseum believes it inevitable "in the long term" that objects removed from the Democratic Republic of the Congo while a Belgian colony will be returned
August 2023
A private Belgian citizen has returned 20 pre-Columbian artefacts that had been in her family's possession for more than 70 years to Mexican officials in Belgium
April 2023
Belgium's Bioethics Advisory Committee and the multi-disciplinary group "Home" advise repatriating the remains of at least 30,000 of human individuals collected on Congolese and Rwandan territories is essential
Paris Match
January 2023
Gold tooth belonging to the pan-African nationalist Patrice Lumumba, assassinated in 1961, is returned by Belgium to the Democratic Republic of Congo
May 2022
Belgian government department sells off valuable bronze sculpture of a head, stolen from the National Museum of Nigeria in 1987, in auction blunder
February 2022
The AfricaMuseum has handed over a list of 84,000 artefacts to the Democratic Republic of Congo to investigate provenances that may lead to restitution
January 2022
Belgium's Council of Ministers has adopted a draft law recognising the alienability of property linked to the Belgian State's colonial past and determining a legal framework for their restitution
August 2021
Belgium agrees to the systematic return of looted artefacts to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to involve a commission of Belgian and Congolese specialists
June 2021
Largest ever hoard of 800 stolen artefacts from Puglia region is discovered in home of Belgian art dealer and returned to Italy
June 2021
Belgian's government has entered into an agreement to return, in a phased manner, artefacts looted from the Democratic Republic of Congo during the Colonial era
June 2021
Belgium returns human remains of Patrice Lumumba to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sixty years after assassinating him
December 2019
Belgian museums continue to struggle with a flurry of restitution claims
September 2019
An inscribed Cypriot tombstone, dated to end of 4th cent/beginning of 3rd cent BC, has been returned to Cyprus at a ceremony in Brussels
June 2016
Stolen marble head of the Emperor Augustus, purchased by the Cinquantenaire Museum in Brussels from a private collector, returns to Italy
November 1997
Belgian police return a Nalinde mask stolen from the National Museum in Livingstone, Zambia to the Zambian authorities
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