Why do diplomats get diplomatic immunity

The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of codified most modern diplomatic and consular practices, including diplomatic immunity.

More than nations are parties to these treaties. The conventions provide immunity to persons according to their rank in a diplomatic mission or consular post and according to the need for immunity in performing their duties.

For example, diplomatic agents and members of their immediate families are immune from all criminal prosecution and most civil law suits. Administrative and technical staff members of embassies have a lower level of immunity. Consular officers serving in consulates throughout the country have an even lower level of immunity.

Members of an embassy's service staff and consular employees are immune only for acts performed as part of their official duties. The main aim of the Convention is to allow diplomats to carry out their work without hindrance in the receiving state. These agreements are vital to international relations. Diplomats attempt to ensure that relations between countries run as smoothly as possible. This sometimes means that they have to raise difficult issues in a direct manner.

In doing so they take into account local customs and sensibilities in order to ensure that their efforts achieve the maximum effect.

The Vienna Convention allows Dutch diplomats to pursue the interests of Dutch citizens and businesses in foreign countries as effectively as possible, even where there are doubts about legal certainty. Dutch diplomats can also use their influence to remind receiving states of their international obligations, for instance to comply with human rights. Diplomatic immunity only works if every country, including ours, abides by the rules.

What is more likely to happen, is that the individual in question may be prosecuted for their crime by their home country, but if immunity is waived by a government it must be in the public interest to prosecute them.

A notable example of this happened in , when a Colombian diplomat in London was prosecuted for manslaughter once diplomatic immunity was waived by the Colombian government. The case of Anne Sacoolas is unusual because diplomatic immunity usually only covers diplomats and their dependants based in London. The arrangement is thought to have been in place as early as between the UK and US for the Northamptonshire base.

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