The first Blue Shield General Assembly under the new 2016 Statutes was held in Vienna in 2017.
The programme focussed on the direction of the Blue Shield under the new statutes.(Vienna 2017 Programme).
As part of the event, Blue Shield Austria hosted a ceremony, attended by Irina Bokova, the Director General of UNESCO, to give an award for “Military Cultural Property Protection”. The award commemorates the 40th anniversary of the First and Second Protocols (1977) to the 1949 Geneva Convention, which for the first time introduced the principle of cultural property protection into the Geneva Conventions, and marks the 2017 General Assembly of The Blue Shield. This award, which was bestowed by the President of the Blue Shield, was given to serving or past military officers of the armed forces of UN member states, who have shown exemplary service with regard to respecting and protecting cultural property during armed conflict under particularly challenging circumstances.
Photos of the Award Ceremony can be downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.
