The concept of the "universal" museum developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the context of the founding of the British Museum, the Napoleonic Wars, European imperialism and colonialism, and the mantra of the "rescue" narrative that sought to justify the removal of cultural artifacts, first from the Mediterranean region and later from sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. This lecture will explore these origins across the arc of the nineteenth century, the inequities of the international legal system then and its shortcomings now, and the continuing discourse used to prop-up the retention of looted cultural objects by European and North American museums and collectors. Evaluating the right to cultural heritage through a human rights perspective, this lecture will analyze the process and elements of reparations and will propose a paradigm for the restitution of cultural objects that falls outside of neocolonial "legal/ethical" frameworks.