Underwater conflict is emerging as one of the most complex and overlooked dimensions of contemporary security and heritage governance. In response to this urgent issue, Blue Shield has founded the Underwater Conflict Heritage Working Group of Blue Shield International (BSUCH). The Group is leading the first coordinated global effort to understand and protect these vulnerable spaces.
Its members come from a global network of experts, creating a platform for collaboration between heritage professionals, archaeologists, military representatives, legal experts, academia, and policy-makers, in order to foster a more proactive and informed approach to the management and safeguarding of conflict-related underwater cultural heritage.
The group’s mission is to ensure that underwater sites affected by historical or contemporary conflict are not only better understood, but that they are actively protected and integrated into international discussions around heritage and security. The group also seeks to embed heritage protection into military policy and training, bridging the divide between cultural heritage and defence practices. To do this, they engage in public outreach, assist armed forces, and law enforcement when requested, and provide advice as requested.
About the underwater conflict domain
Underwater conflict extends far beyond oceans and century-old shipwrecks to include rivers, lakes, estuaries, reservoirs, ports, harbours, and the strategic infrastructures embedded within them. These environments intersect with geopolitical competition, military operations, environmental hazards, transnational crime, and the cultural significance that communities attach to submerged wartime remains. As a result, underwater conflict occupies a unique space where security, hydrology, environmental risk, international law, and community identity converge. The underwater conflict domain brings together hydrology, critical infrastructure, geopolitics, environmental risk, transnational crime, and the cultural and psychological dimensions of heritage, among others.
What is being protected?
Underwater heritage far exceeds the traditional maritime perspective. It is not restricted to oceans or to sites and objects that are over one-hundred-years old (the criterion introduced by the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage). However, the 1954 Hague Convention, for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict can include underwater cultural heritage.
Underwater heritage encompasses a wide range of heritage in submerged or partially submerged spaces such as rivers, lakes, estuaries, deltas, reservoirs, ports, and harbours. Many of these are part of or sit alongside strategic infrastructures, military activities, resulting in cultural heritage sites that are directly or indirectly shaped by conflict.
Activities
The group’s work demonstrates that underwater heritage holds far greater relevance for the military, policymakers, and governments than traditionally assumed. It provides strategic insight that helps clarify threats from unexploded munitions, pollution from wartime wrecks, and rising maritime tensions, revealing how these sites can inform more effective planning, cooperation, and security decision-making.
A key priority of BSUCH is the development of practical guidance for military, naval, coastguard, and security actors on how their activities may interact with underwater cultural heritage in conflict, post-conflict, and training contexts. This includes raising awareness of sensitive sites, legacy munitions, and polluting wrecks, and promoting approaches that minimise unintended damage.
You can contact the Working Group at
