Interfering with absolute immunity risks weakening protection provided therefrom, risking the ability of diplomats to perform their functions and cancelling out the intent of diplomacy. This makes any changes unlikely since it is in no State’s interests to leave its diplomats insufficiently protected. The need to protected freedom and independence of diplomats in order to permit them to carry out their functions without risk of undue pressure by receiving States is still very real, just as abuse is. However, any change to the current immunity assumes that the diplomat no longer requires the current immunity. The greatest obstacle when dealing with proposed remedies and emerging trends, is usually political consensus.
Effectiveness of remedies is greatly impacted by factors such as political relations, trade and reciprocity, which factors supersede the desire to attain justice. Such reasons for abuse make immunity the common principal object but not the only one. The reasons behind abuse are several and include culture, norms, corruption in one’s home country, the country’s attitude towards the host state, the international political atmosphere, duration of tenure and the willingness to commit abuse by the diplomat. This thesis discusses how immunity in itself fails to explain why certain diplomats abuse their immunity whilst others do not. Therefore, abuse of diplomatic immunity has often led governments, legal authors and the general public to question its very existence.
However since privileges and immunities form an evident exception to general rules of accountability within national and international law, diplomats are able to turn immunity into impunity. These options would make diplomats accountable for both criminal and civil wrongs.ĭiplomatic Immunity has strong reason for its existence principally, that of guaranteeing the freedom and independence of diplomats in order to permit them to carry out their functions without risk of undue pressure by receiving States. Finally it will argue that for these agreements to be truly effective they must provide waiver and settlement options similar to those used in the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN. Further, it will propose that an additional Protocol to the Vienna Convention be drafted allowing states to execute bilateral agreements limiting the immunity of their diplomats to functional immunity. It will argue that functional immunity should be applied to diplomats rather than absolute immunity. It will show that the functional necessity theory of immunity has been successful in its application to the privileges and immunities of officials working in international organizations, such as the UN. It will propose limiting immunity to only those acts required for a diplomat to fulfill his official functions. However due to the frequent abuse of diplomatic privileges, this research will suggest that absolute immunity is unnecessary and undesirable. These conventions have formalized the customary rules and made their application more uniform. In the period since WW II, a number of international conventions (most noteworthy, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations) have been concluded. As a matter of international law, diplomatic immunity was primarily based on custom and international practice until quite recently. Ancient Greek and Roman governments, for example, accorded special status to envoys, and the basic concept has evolved and endured until the present. The principle of diplomatic immunity is one of the oldest elements of foreign relations.
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