2025 has been another busy, exciting, positive (and occasionally) frustrating year. It has essentially been a year where I have been looking to the future, while Blue Shield teams at national and international levels have continued delivering on our daily work around the world.
A good start
This year has seen a significant increase in our anticipated annual income through project funding. In 2023 our income was approximately € 80 000, we now seem to be on track to have realised income closer to € 500 000 from project funding this year. This is an astonishing increase and much of this success is down to extremely hard work by initially Michael Delacruz and then, following Michael’s decision to concentrate on his academic and military careers, Emma Cunliffe who is now our acting Director of Operations. My enormous thanks go to them both for their endless hard work on our behalf.
Our work this year is primarily funded by the UK government Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Their support has enabled us to focus in Ukraine, providing capacity building in areas of international humanitarian law related to the protection of cultural heritage.
We are also in the early stages of delivering a new DCMS-funded four-year project which aims to
- promote preparedness and policies by promoting the implementation of the 1954 Hague Convention and its Protocols and fostering proactive protection and risk preparedness
- deliver fast action response to heritage-related crisis
- strengthen resources and resilience to protect heritage in crisis-affected areas by developing capacity to manage and protect cultural resources and providing post-emergency/ post-conflict assistance, and to
- support the development of the Blue Shield’s capacity and structure.
These are exciting times for us: Blue Shield is going from strength to strength.
In addition to our project funding, core work has also continued, with a busy schedule of advocacy and awareness raising. BSI has given lectures in over a dozen countries around the world, from Europe to Australia to the Republic of Korea. Training also continues as a core activity, and this year BSI was delighted to run the fourth iteration of our Cultural Property Protection Course with the United Nations Training School Ireland, the Irish Defence Forces, and Blue Shield Ireland. As always, feedback was extremely positive. The secretariat also continues to support the European Security Defence College and NATO in training and exercises, reaching many nations at once in the conduct of good cultural property protection. The implementation of the 1954 Hague Convention in practice is a core area of our mission.
As well as supporting our existing regional and national committees, we continue to support those creating new national committees; there are currently 8 around the world, and we have received credible expressions of interest from several more. It’s fantastic to see the continuous growing recognition of the value of Blue Shield around the world.
Challenges
An issue with project funding is that it gets spent on the projects it was intended to fund and does not provide any significant contribution to the core costs of key staff at the centre of the organisation. This situation was brought into stark reality when it became clear that the funding from Newcastle University, through my UNESCO Chair in Cultural Protection and Peace, is to end on 31 December 2027. Through its funding, Newcastle University has been the primary supporter of the Blue Shield since 2016; support that has allowed the organisation to grow significantly. The Blue Shield will be forever in Newcastle University’s debt. This pressing need to find additional core funding was behind my discussions, which began in May 2024, with the J M Kaplan Fund to help develop a robust organisation with a clear vision and mission that would, crucially, attract external funding to strengthen the central team. Working with fundraisers in Europe and the USA, we have set ourselves the target to have a staff of four full time equivalent staff, working from a central office, by the end of 2027 and a staff closer to fourteen by 2030.
These are ambitious targets, but essential if we are to deliver on our aspirations. We are currently talking to several countries, Foundations, and individuals about joining in a partnership of funders and to others about the possibility of hosting a Blue Shield central office. I hope to be able to report favourably on developments next year.
The Fulfilling Potential Review
2025 therefore saw the start of a critical step towards this aspirational target – the Fulfilling Potential Review (FPR), kindly funded and supported by the J M Kaplan Fund. The FPR is overseen by representatives from our founding organisations, national committees, and the Secretariat, along with an independent advisor, and myself. We were delighted to appoint Tara-Jane Sutcliffe as FPR Project Manager in the summer.
Following the first round of consultations, we are already starting on the proactive change needed to take the Blue Shield into the future, to develop and grow our work globally, and to really begin to become the “Red Cross for cultural property” as envisaged at our founding.
Next year the Blue Shield will be 30. We have come a very long way from the organisation established in 1996 by the Founding Four with no legal status and no funding. Much of the work anticipated above will culminate at what we hope will be a 30th anniversary conference (1996-2026), training event, and General Assembly in September or October 2026. I look forward to sharing good news and details of this in the New Year.
I wish you all the very best for 2026. It is going to be another exciting, busy year, and with hard work, I am certain it will be a very successful year for the Blue Shield. It remains a privilege to be your President and to see and be a part of your global work protecting cultural property in crisis.
Peter G Stone
President
22 December 2025
