The Russian lawyer, painter and writer Nicholas Roerich, who witnessed the destruction of cultural assets in Russia during the First World War and the October Revolution, initiated the development of an independent treaty at the beginning of the 1930s to protect cultural assets during armed conflicts. . On his initiative, Georges Chklaver of the Institute for Higher International Studies at the University of Paris drew up a corresponding draft in 1929. This proposal was subsequently discussed by the International Museum Office of the League of Nations and at private conferences in Bruges in 1931 and 1932 and in Washington, D.C. in 1933. The seventh international conference of American states, which took place in Buenos Aires in 1933, recommended the adoption of the draft. The Board of the Pan-American Union subsequently presented a treaty "on the protection of artistic and scientific institutions and historical monuments", which was signed on 15 April 1935 in the White House by 21 states in North, Central and South America. Ten of the signatory states also became parties by ratification, the first of which was the United States on 13 July 1935 and the last of which was Colombia on 20 February 1937. The agreement, also known as the Roerich Pact after its initiator, entered into force on 26 August 1935.