The French bill targets property acquired between 1815 and 1972, spanning the broad sweep of French imperial expansion. Previously, every individual restitution required a separate act of parliament, a cumbersome process that made return almost impossible at scale. The new framework creates two expert committees to assess requests: one including scientific experts and representatives from the requesting state, and another drawing on museum, government, and legislative personnel. If the committees recommend return, the government may approve restitution without fresh parliamentary legislation. This is, as one senator put it, “a stable framework, which will allow for real progress going forward”: not a revolution, but a workable process.

The legislation fulfils a pledge President Macron first made in Ouagadougou in 2017, when he promised France would “never again interfere in its former colonies.” It builds on earlier steps: in 2023, framework laws enabled the return of artworks looted from Jewish families and the repatriation of human remains, establishing a legislative template. In 2025, France returned a colonial-era “talking drum” to the Ivory Coast. Algeria, Mali and Benin have all submitted restitution requests that are set to benefit from the streamlined process. This is cultural diplomacy with substantive legal architecture behind it.

Britain’s situation is structurally similar, yet legally frozen. The British Museum Act 1963 prohibits the Museum’s trustees from permanently deaccessioning objects from its collection except in highly limited circumstances. This is the legal barrier blocking the return of the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece, the Benin Bronzes, and hundreds of other contested objects.

The Charities Act 2022 may allow museums to return objects where they feel a clear moral duty to do so; however, the exact impact of this law remains uncertain. Prime Minister Starmer has stated his government “has no plans to change the law” on the Parthenon Sculptures, a position that is increasingly hard to defend internationally.

The human rights argument for reform is compelling. Cultural heritage is not merely aesthetic; it is constitutive of identity, memory, and dignity. International instruments, including UNESCO’s 1970 Convention on illicit cultural property and UNDRIP’s protections for Indigenous cultural rights, ground restitution claims in international law. Britain’s refusal to engage legislatively does not merely maintain the status quo; it perpetuates the original wrong.

France’s new law is imperfect, and its political compromises are visible on its face. Most strikingly, it does not use the word ‘colonialism’, a deliberate omission to placate the far-right National Rally, which wants restitutions limited to states with “cordial” diplomatic relations with France. This political bargain risks inconsistent application: states currently governed by military juntas such as [example], several of which are former French colonies in West Africa, could be excluded by this condition. The far-left party, ‘La France Insoumise’, argued the scope was too narrow. Both critiques reveal a central tension: the law is framed as administrative modernisation rather than an act of moral reckoning with colonialism.

But imperfect legislation that enables restitution is better than elegant inaction. Britain should legislate: not simply to amend the British Museum Act, but to establish a positive, accessible framework for restitution claims modelled on what France has now achieved. If the argument is that Britain’s colonial past is too vast to address by law, France, which also held a large colonial empire, has just demonstrated otherwise.

One such law is Section 103(f)(1) of the Compact of Free Association Amendments Act of 2003. Congress amended this provision in 2012, requiring the Department of Energy (DOE) to conduct groundwater monitoring around the Runit Dome every four years. The United States constructed the Runit Dome in the 1970s to contain radioactive waste from the nuclear tests but there are ongoing concerns that radioactive materials are leaking into the oceans, posing threats to the environment and public health. However, the DOE has consistently denied responsibility for monitoring the Runit Dome and has failed to adequately complete studies required under Section 103(f)(1). Congress, as it had previously done so in a 2021 oversight hearing, should promptly require the DOE to act.

Additionally, Section 177 of the Compact (177 Agreement) established a $150 million trust fund to compensate the Marshallese for damages resulting from U.S. nuclear testing. RMI’s Nuclear Claims Tribunal, however, assessed more than $2.3 billion in claims, which means that injured claimants were never fully compensated. Because the 177 Agreement was intended as a “full settlement,” the United States claims that the 177 Agreement bars the Marshallese from pursuing further legal claims against the United States once the $150 million was depleted. There are many issues with this narrow reading of the 177 Agreement.

First, as the OHCHR report points out, the 177 Agreement was signed when RMI was under the control of the United States. Because RMI was not sovereign when it signed the agreement, the provision ratifying the “full settlement” and barring any future claims against the United States could not have reflected the “free and genuine expression of the will” of the Marshallese.

Second, the 177 Agreement contains a “changed circumstances” clause, which allows RMI to request additional claims if new evidence of harm or unforeseen consequences arises. However, the United States has repeatedly denied petitions brought under this clause. In 2000, RMI petitioned Congress, presenting newly declassified information and scientific studies that revealed greater health and environmental impacts than previously acknowledged. Despite these findings, a working group convened by the State Department concluded that the petition did not meet the agreement’s criteria. Congress has also failed to act on the petition.

The United States’s execution of the 177 Agreement is, therefore, inconsistent with its obligations under Article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Pursuant to its international obligations, the United States should provide “effective remedy” to those harmed by its nuclear testing.

Above all, this remedy should include a formal apology to the Marshall Islands that acknowledges the United States’s responsibility for the full extent of the harm caused. As part of this acknowledgement, the United States should disclose to the Marshallese all relevant records related to its nuclear legacy in the Marshall Islands, including currently withheld information about nuclear fallout, environmental contamination, and health impacts. Full disclosure will never undo the profound wrongs that the United States inflicted on the Marshallese people. However, consistent with the principle of maximum disclosure, transparency is a necessary step toward healing, rebuilding trust, and redressing the lasting harms of the nuclear testing. In the perennial words of former Marshallese leader Tony de Brum: “[T]here can be no closure without full disclosure.”

TRANSGENERATIONAL TRAUMA

Can the trauma of violence echo across generations, leaving scars on those not yet born? Victims of mass atrocities commonly suffer from a multitude of harms which often tend to be deeply connected. Psychological harms are often a challenge to quantify monetarily and in terms of impact. Yet, they often have the most long-lasting effects. Studies indicate that the trauma experienced by survivors may be genetically transmitted to their offspring, manifesting in a myriad of behavioural and psychological patterns. The ICC has recognised transgenerational harm, but previously ruled against awarding reparations for victims due to questions of causality. However, in  Prosecutor v. Bosco Ntaganda (2021), the ICC opened the door to awarding reparations for transgenerational harm. What remains relatively unexplored in this context, however, is whether the contours of this jurisprudential development will extend to awarding reparations to an ‘unborn child’ for enduring transgenerational impact.

PRESENT STATUS OF TRANSGENERATIONAL HARM

Scientific experts agree on the two leading schools on transgenerational trauma – social transmission theory and the epigenetic transmission theory. Both theories converge (Para 10) on the fact that trauma is passed through generations. These children often face severe stigma, enduring blame, scorn, and being labelled as ‘war babies’.

Mr. Ongwen’s role in transgenerational harm

Mr. Ongwen was convicted [3116] of multiple sexual and gender-based crimes, inter alia,  rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and forced marriage. His actions of forcibly impregnating several women caused genital anomalies for the victims, presenting [288]  a pattern of sexual violence. It is a warranted claim that much of these crimes are causative agents of transgenerational harm. Notably, the ICC recognised and awarded [789]-[790] reparations to such victims of transgenerational harm recognizing [168]  that children born amid reproductive cruelty inherit their parents’ trauma, perpetuating cycles of dysfunction even without experiencing direct violence.

EVIDENTIARY STANDARDS EMPLOYED BY THE ICC

While assessing the liability of the perpetrator in reparations proceedings, the Court usually adopts [22]  a flexible evidentiary threshold, to accommodate victims facing barriers in proving harm caused by crimes. On the one hand, the balance of probabilities test has been a consistent jurisprudence of the ICC in several reparations proceedings (Lubanga Reparations Order [65]  and the Ntaganda Reparations Order [143]). It requires the Applicant to adopt a gender-inclusive and sensitive approach [60]. Accordingly, victims are not put to a strict standard of proof (Rule 63 (4)). On the other hand, the but-for relationship standard posits a requirement that the crimes for which the person was convicted was the proximate cause of the harm for which reparations are sought, to justify a finding of liability (Katanga judgement [15]).

Building upon these standards, the ICC has broadened its reparations framework to address transgenerational harm through a four-pronged test [206]: proving direct victimhood to Mr. Ongwen’s crimes, establishing the child’s personal suffering, demonstrating parental-child trauma causation, and verifying the parent-child relationship. This framework integrates the ‘balance of probabilities’ test to assess [509]  the victims’ eligibility and the ‘but/for’ test to establish [419]  causation between victimhood and crime.

CONCLUSION: WAY FORWARD

The ICC has seamlessly included victims of transgenerational harm within the systemic fabric of international criminal law. By fostering dialogue, restorative justice addresses harm through a reparative process. The ICC’s reparations system has enabled flexibility in defining victims and its emphasis on collective reparations. This progressive approach to transgenerational harm and reparations demonstrates a shift toward inclusivity, addressing the consequences of mass atrocities on successive generations.