The destruction of cultural properties has been a constant issue across history due to events such as climate change, collateral effects during conflicts or purpose damage. Terrorist groups such as the Islamic State structured the destruction and exploitation of cultural heritage as their modus operandi to obtain artefacts to finance their activities, contributing to what we call cultural suicide. This practice has drawn the attention of International Organizations in the area of security in the last decade. Institutions such as the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have developed a number of documents to condemn and combat this issue. Therefore, this problem demands an international cooperative and coordinated response regarding its cross-border nature and complexity in terms of trading and the actors involved. Thus, securitization theory was applied and a discourse analysis of primary documents from UNSC resolutions between 2001 and 2015 was carried out to explore how the looting and trafficking of cultural property contributes to the securitization discourse of cultural properties.