- Flash flooding kills three in northern Thailand
- Kaur leads India to victory over Pakistan in Women's T20 World Cup
- Juventus held by Cagliari after late penalty drama
- In France's Marseille, teen 'stabbed 50 times' then burned alive
- Ruthless Gauff beats Muchova in straight sets to win China Open
- India restrict Pakistan to 105-8 in Women's T20 World Cup
- England target repeat of Pakistan Test whitewash
- Penrith Panthers win fourth straight NRL title after downing Storm
- Weary Sinner happy for day off after battling into Shanghai last 16
- Pakistan's Masood warns England still a force without Stokes
- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Sabalenka targets world number one and Wuhan hat-trick
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Bagnaia sets 'example' with Japan MotoGP win to cut gap on Martin
- Intense Israeli bombing rocks Beirut ahead of war anniversary
- Mozambique vote: no suspense but some disillusion
- Austrian rapper channels anti-racist rage in Romani hip-hop songs
- Ohtani magic powers Dodgers over Padres in MLB playoff thriller
- Five of the best: Pakistan-England Test thrillers
- Man sets arm on fire as marches across US mark Gaza war anniversary
- Vietnam's young coffee entrepreneurs brew up a revolution
- Trump rallies at site of failed assassination: 'Never quit'
- Too hot by day, Dubai's floodlit beaches are packed at night
- Is music finally reckoning with #MeToo?
- Fans hail Trump's 'guts' as he returns to site of rally shooting
- Lebanon state media says Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Miami on track for MLS record points after win in Toronto
- Monaco take top spot in Ligue 1 with win at Rennes
- Madrid beat Villarreal to level Liga leaders Barca
- Thuram treble fires Inter past Torino and up to second
- 'Fight': defiant Trump jets in to site of rally shooting
- Mexico City's new mayor sworn in with pledges on water, housing
- Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Guardians maul Tigers in MLB playoff series opener
- Macron criticises Israel on Gaza, Lebanon operations
- French rugby player whistled but 'serene' on return amid ongoing rape case
- Retegui hat-trick fires five-star Atalanta to hammering of Genoa
- Heavyweights Australia, England off to World Cup winning starts
- Visiting UN refugee agency chief decries 'terrible crisis' in Lebanon
- Spinners come to party as England defeat Bangladesh at T20 World Cup
- Search continues for missing in deadly Bosnia floods
- Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- France's Auradou whistled on Pau return in Perpignan loss amid ongoing rape case
- A 'forgotten' valley in storm-hit North Carolina, desperate for help
- Arsenal hit back in style after Southampton scare
- Hezbollah heir apparent Safieddine out of contact after strikes
- Liverpool stay top of Premier League as Arsenal, Man City win
- In dank Tour of Emilia, Pogacar shines in rainbow jersey
- DR Congo launches mpox vaccination drive, hoping to curb outbreak
'Titanic' task of finding plundered African art in French museums
With tens of thousands of African artworks in French museums, curators face a huge task in trying to identify which of these were plundered during colonial rule in the 19th and 20th centuries and should be returned.
During a visit to Burkina Faso in 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to return "African heritage to Africa" within five years, pushing other former colonial powers, including Belgium and Germany, to launch similar initiatives.
In 2021, France repatriated 26 royal treasures its soldiers took from Benin during colonial rule.
The effort has stalled, and in March the government indefinitely postponed a bill authorising the return of African and other cultural artefacts following right-wing resistance in the Senate.
French museums are nonetheless studying the origins of some 90,000 African objects in their archives.
Most -- 79,000 -- are in the Quai Branly museum in Paris dedicated to indigenous art from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.
The task is "titanic and exhilarating", said Emilie Salaberry, head of the Angouleme Museum, which houses around 5,000 African objects.
"It's turned upside down how we understand our collections," she told AFP.
- 'Real investigative work' -
Identifying an object's provenance is becoming central to museum work, but tracking down the necessary information is hard and time-consuming.
France's Army Museum began its inventory in 2012 but has only been able to study around a quarter of its 2,248 African pieces.
And while it says there is a "reasonable hypothesis" that many are spoils of war, it has struggled to establish definitive conclusions.
"The main difficulty... is the relative lack of sources," a museum spokesperson told AFP.
Emilie Giraud, president of ICOM France, which oversees 600 museums, said: "It's real investigative work which requires cross-checking clues and finding sources that may be scattered, sometimes abroad, or might not even exist at all."
It is hoped the task will grow easier as this type of research becomes commonplace.
The University of Paris-Nanterre introduced a course dedicated to provenance in 2022, and the Louvre School at the heart of the famed museum followed suit in 2023.
Germany and France launched a three-year, 2.1-million-euro ($2.2 million) fund for provenance research in January.
"We need to be transparent about everything, including the inadequacies of our catalogues, our dating, and our designations," said Katia Kukawka, chief curator of the Aquitaine Museum, calling the job an "ethical imperative".
– Frustrated efforts -
To ease the cost burden, the Aquitaine Museum, which has 2,500 African objects, is pooling resources with other organisations, including museums in Gabon and Cameroon.
But without the proposed law, it remains uncertain what criteria will determine when an object must be returned to Africa.
If it was illegally acquired, that might be sufficient, said Salaberry, of the Angouleme Museum, but the lack of clear historical records will continue to frustrate restitution efforts.
"There will be an enormous number of objects for which light can never be shed," she said.
Loans and long-term retainers could be an alternative to full restitution -- as Britain recently did for items from the Ashanti, or Asante, royal court in Ghana.
But not everyone was impressed with that.
As Nana Oforiatta Ayim, a culture adviser to Ghana's government, told the BBC: "Someone comes into your home and steals something, keeps it in their house, and then X amount of years later comes up and says 'I'm going to lend you your things back'.
"It doesn't make any sense."
F.Santana--PC