The Blue Shield Annual Report was approved by the General Assembly of Members and is now available for download.
What an exciting year 2024 was for the Blue Shield!
Whilst we mourned the loss of major figure in CPP, Patrick Boylan – who co-founded the Blue Shield – our achievements have been seen around the world. 2024 was the 70th anniversary of the 1954 Hague Convention and its Protocols – an important time to focus on promotion and implementation of this vital legislation whilst continuing with our existing work.
- Our network has continued to grow – there are now 34 National and Regional Committees. Welcome Armenia and Sweden!
- Active promotion of the 1954 Hague Convention, with conferences, training, webinars and awareness-raising campaigns.
- Blue Shield is a widely recognised source of advice in policy, regulations, and legal cases relating to countering trafficking.
- Active in lobbying governments for ratification of new laws and improvements to existing laws.
- Remote monitoring and support for 4 conflicts, with national teams on the ground responding to 15 emergency incidents (including fires, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes) across 3 continents
- Organised and ran more than 90 training events with hundreds of participants worldwide
- Organised and spoke at more than 80 public awareness raising events, reaching thousands of armed forces, heritage professionals, emergency responders, and government staff.
- Training in preventing illicit trafficking and heritage crime, and support for repatriation.
- Development of standards, toolkits, and risk plans at institutional and government level for disaster preparedness.
- Work is underpinned by peer reviewed academic publications, ensuring Blue Shield’s work is at the cutting edge good practice and pushing the boundaries forward!
- Increased partnership working with new MoUs nationally and internationally, and
- Extensive volunteer networks with hundreds of highly trained, deployable volunteers.
“Almost 30 years of protecting heritage in crisis has given us time to reflect not only on what we’ve achieved, but on how we got there, and on where we want to be. … Together with our heritage, humanitarian and uniformed partners, we have built on the creation of the Blue Shield by the founding four organisations in 1996 to establish the Blue Shield as a worldwide organisation.”
