Facebook’s Black Market in Antiquities:
ICOM Red List Artifacts Offered on Facebook
In ATHAR Project’s investigative report, Facebook’s Black Market in Antiquities: Trafficking, Terrorism and War Crimes, they tracked and analyzed 95 Arabic-language Facebook Groups consisting of 1,947,195 members across the world involved in antiquities trafficking.
During the investigation, the ATHAR Project documented thousands of illicit artifacts on Facebook with tens of thousands more still left to document. Their evidence of antiquities trafficking has been compiled and matched to ICOM Red Lists for Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, spanning a variety of periods and materials. An example of each Red List item has been organized into this catalogue.
The research from ATHAR Project’s two reports led Facebook to ban the sale of historical relics under their Community Standards.
Authors:
Amr Al Azm
Katie A. Paul