In 1939, a draft convention, elaborated under the auspices of the International Museums Office, was presented to governments by the Netherlands. Due to the onset of the Second World War the draft convention was shelved with no further steps being taken. With the conclusion of the war, a new proposal was submitted to UNESCO by the Netherlands in 1948. The General Conference of UNESCO in 1951 decided to convene a committee of government experts to draft a convention. This committee met in 1952 and thereafter submitted its drafts to the General Conference. The intergovernmental Conference, which drew up and adopted the Convention and the further Acts, took place at The Hague from 21 April to 14 May 1954 where 56 States were represented. Following this international agreement The Hague Convention For the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict would come into force in 1956 in order to be an instrument of non derogation for the states bound by the document to stop the looting and destruction of cultural property. Implementation of the Convention Punishment for infringements The Rome Statute, adopted in July 1998 and entering into force four years later, as the legal basis of the International Criminal Court (ICC), defines in Article 8(2) deliberate attacks against buildings of a religious, educational, artistic, scientific or non-profit nature and against historical monuments as war crimes in both international and non-international armed conflicts. The International Criminal Court is thus authorised to prosecute such crimes if such an act was committed either by a national of a Contracting Party or on the territory of a Contracting Party. However, it only exercises its competence if the country concerned is unwilling or unable to ensure effective prosecution itself. Since September 2015, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi has been charged with the destruction of mausoleums in Timbuktu in the first trial before the ICC over the destruction of cultural assets. Siege of Dubrovnik and the Mostar Bridge Article 3 of the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia also contains provisions that allow the prosecution of violations of the fundamental principles of the Hague Convention of 1954. On the basis of this article, for the first time since the conclusion of the Convention, proceedings were brought in an international court for the destruction of cultural property during an armed conflict. From the time of its establishment the city of