Benin asks France to return 35 more colonial-era objects under new restitution law

Five years after France sent 26 royal treasures back to Benin, the West African country has returned with a longer list. On 5 October 2026, during a meeting at the Élysée Palace in Paris between Benin’s president, Romuald Wadagni, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, Benin renewed its request for the return of 35 cultural objects and a body of archives held in French public collections, according to Beninese media and the Ecofin news agency.

No decision was announced. The request matters beyond the two countries because of its timing: it was made five months after France changed the way such returns are decided.

What Benin is asking for

The full list has not been published in the reports seen for this article, but several pieces have been named:

• The statue of Gou, a figure of the deity of iron and war from the former kingdom of Dahomey, now in the Louvre. The Beninese outlet Triomphe Mag said it was taken during the French conquest of Dahomey in 1892.
• The throne of King Toffa of Porto-Novo.
• A carved wooden divination tray held at the Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac in Paris, described by Ecofin as the tray of Guèdègbé, a diviner of the Fâ tradition.
• The doors of the palace of Kétou, carved woodwork, according to Ecofin.

The objects come mainly from the former kingdoms of Dahomey and Porto-Novo, the Beninese daily La Nouvelle Tribune reported. Benin’s previous president, Patrice Talon, had already said in 2021 that he regretted the Gou statue and the divination tray remained in France, the paper recalled.

What changed in French law

French public collections are legally inalienable: objects in them cannot simply be given away. Until this year, each restitution therefore needed its own act of parliament. That is how the 26 works from the royal treasure of Abomey, taken by French troops in 1892, went back to Benin in November 2021, and how a sabre associated with El Hadj Omar Tall was returned to Senegal.

A framework law dated 9 May 2026 – Law No. 2026-351, on the restitution of cultural property that was the object of illicit appropriation – replaced that case-by-case approach. As summarised by The Art Newspaper and by a commentary from the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, it works as follows:

• A request must come from a state, which has to commit to protecting the objects and showing them to the public.
• A bilateral scientific committee, with experts from both countries, examines the request.
• If the objects are found to have been stolen, looted, sold under duress or given by someone with no authority to do so, the government can order their return by decree, without a vote in parliament.
• A national scientific commission, added at the Senate’s insistence, is to publish an annual report.

The law has limits. It applies to acquisitions made between 1815 and April 1972, the date when a UNESCO convention on cultural property took effect; later cases go to the civil courts. Military items, public archives and France’s share of finds from archaeological digs are excluded, The Art Newspaper reported. Some deputies objected that the 1815 starting point leaves out objects taken by Napoleon’s armies and earlier transfers from the Americas; an amendment to remove the date was rejected.

The culture minister, Catherine Pégard, said during the debate that procedures would be “strictly supervised” and reaffirmed the inalienability of public collections, according to The Art Newspaper, which described the law as more selective than the recommendations of the 2018 report that Macron commissioned from the scholars Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr.

The criticism

Not everyone regards the law as a concession. In the Cambridge commentary, published in June 2026, the researcher María Ruigomez-Eraso argued that its conditions make it politically convenient for France, which gains prestige and new diplomatic relationships. She cited the commentator Kwame Opoku, writing for the website ModernGhana, who objected that the law’s title mentions neither colonisation nor Africa and who asked who the “scientific” experts would be and what their qualifications would be.

Where Benin’s claim stands

Benin prepared its file in advance. On 14 July 2026 the government installed a six-member national scientific committee in Cotonou, chaired by Alain Godonou as representative of the presidency, to assemble the historical and legal case for the 35 objects and the archives, La Nouvelle Tribune reported. Its members include Djimmy Djiffa Edah, the director of cultural heritage, and Marie-Cécile Zinsou.

That committee is meant to work with a joint French-Beninese scientific commission. Citing the French public broadcaster RFI, La Nouvelle Tribune reported that the French side of the commission was still being formed, that a first French response was expected in mid-October, and that discussions could then continue for several weeks. No timetable for decisions has been set.

Benin is not the only claimant. When the law passed, The Art Newspaper listed pending requests from Algeria, Ivory Coast, Madagascar and Mali, a joint claim by Mali and Senegal for the so-called treasure of Ségou, and general requests from Ethiopia and Chad.

Where the returned works would go

The 26 works returned in 2021 were exhibited at the Marina Palace in Cotonou in 2022 and are still waiting for their permanent home, the planned Museum of the Kings and Amazons of Danxomè in Abomey, whose construction has been delayed, Ecofin reported. The agency said Benin’s government is pressing ahead with several museum projects, among them that museum, an international Vodun museum in Porto-Novo and a museum of memory and slavery in Ouidah.