and 1932 and in Washington, D.C. in 1933. The seventh international conference of American states, which took place in Buenos Aires in 1933, recommended the adoption of the draft. The Board of the Pan-American Union subsequently presented a treaty "on the protection of artistic and scientific institutions and historical monuments", which was signed on 15 April 1935 in the White House by 21 states in North, Central and South America. Ten of the signatory states also became parties by ratification, the first of which was the United States on 13 July 1935 and the last of which was Colombia on 20 February 1937. The agreement, also known as the Roerich Pact after its initiator, entered into force on 26 August 1935. The Roerich Pact contained eight articles and several significant innovations compared with the general provisions of Articles 27 and 56 of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. On the one hand, the treaty established the status of neutrality for historical monuments, museums, scientific and artistic institutions as well as educational and cultural institutions. This legal position, comparable to the neutrality of medical personnel and comparable institutions during a war, resulted in respect for these goods by all parties involved in a conflict and thus their protection. The Parties should send lists of monuments and sites for which they claimed protection under the Treaty to the Pan-American Union, which should forward them to all States Parties. In addition, the Treaty defined a protection mark for the marking of cultural objects, consisting of three red dots in a red circle on a white background. Nicholas Roerich, who designed it with early symbolism in mind, described the significance of the three points as a symbol of art, science and religion as the three most important cultural activities of humanity, with the circle as the element that linked these three aspects in the past, present and future. The symbol was also called the "Banner of Peace", the movement based on the Roerich Pact under the name Pax Cultura in analogy to the Geneva Conventions as the "Red Cross of Culture". However, the acceptance of the Roerich Pact was limited to the United States and the countries of Central and South America. Not a single country in Europe and Asia, the geopolitical focus of the Second World War that began a few years later, signed or ratified the treaty. Even though it remains