By Eric Wamanji
Saudi Arabia is in a tight diplomatic heat chamber thanks to the barbarous murder of journalist, Mr Jamal Khashoggi, inside the safety of its consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
The horrific acts visited on the late Mr Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and critique, has send cold chills down the spine of the civilised world. It has also attracted wide-ranging condemnation, and prompted high profile delegates to shun an investor’s conference in Riyadh. It is strongly held that Mr Khashoggi’s murder was state-sanctioned.
However, extraterritorial state-sponsored, Machiavellian assassinations are not new. The recent poisoning of Mr Seregei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury U.K, by the Russians, is a case in point and a manifestation of reckless impunity states have resorted to.
Sacrosanct in the diplomatic realm
However, the difference is that in the case of Mr Kashoggi, the theater of the atrocious act was in a place considered sacrosanct in the diplomatic realm – the consulate.
That is why the murder has thrown scholars and subjects of diplomatic law into a spin regarding the fundamental matter of immunity. It has also triggered renewed conversations on diplomatic privileges in a more complex and entwined globalised society.
See, immunity in diplomacy is a time-honored tradition ordaining that envoys, their residences and their parcels known as “diplomatic bags”, are inviolable. This customary construct was concretised in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961 and its counterpart – the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963.
While a noble custom that has afforded diplomats sovereignty to effectively represent their countries exclusive of any encumbrances, diplomats and their sending states have stretched the frontiers of this privilege, abusing it with abandon, producing distress and embarrassment.
Immunity cards
And the litany of these transgressions is long like the Nile. Diplomats have raped, maimed, enslaved, trafficked drugs or rare metals, and when nabbed, they cheekily flash their immunity cards.
The Swiss anti-organised crime watchdog, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime in an exposé –Crime, Conservation and Criminal Networks in Illicit Rhino Horn Trade, reveals that diplomats, especially from North Korea based in South Africa, have abused the diplomatic immunity to smuggle banned wildlife products such as tusks and horns. Continently, the rogue diplomats use diplomatic bags, which cannot be searched or opened, to ship their contrabands.
In schools of diplomacy, it has become part of the case studies the story of Mr Umaru Dikko, former minister in Nigeria and exiled in London. In 1984, the Nigerians abducted Mr Dikko, sedated and stashed him in a crate marked “diplomatic bag.” This happened even when the Vienna Convention allows the pouch to only official documents for diplomatic use. Still, well, as fate would have it, a hitch at the airport blew the lid and Mr Dikko, who was wanted home to stand trial, was rescued.
Ambassador’s premises
But that may not be as bizarre as the accounts of a Burmese diplomat. In 1979, the envoy in Sri Lanka is said to have shot his alleged disloyal wife. He then burned the body in the compound as police watched helplessly because international law constrained them from “violating” ambassador’s premises.
Diplomatic immunity is a powerful norm. States love it because it operates on the principle of reciprocity. Yet, largely, agents of crime go scot-free. Victims are left to nurse their pain. Pursuing justice in the home state of diplomats is near impossible because of the intrigues, costs and even the fact that diplomats are well entrenched in their home country’s political architecture. Oftentimes, the diplomats are protected by the powers that be.
Still, voices of change are calling for a review of the diplomatic law. The Istanbul fiasco
has attracted scrutiny and raised substantive ethical and legal concerns reigniting the debate on reforms of the diplomatic immunity.
Though sending states can lift the diplomat’s immunity, this is hardly the norm. This is because, more often than not, rogue diplomats are well-connected persons back home. Thus, the only recourse available to a host state is to declare such envoys persona non-grata inline with article 9 of the Vienna Convention.
The trouble with the current diplomatic law is deficiency of solid prescriptions for reparation amid abuse. Ironically, today, it is easier in the international system, to prosecute a head of state than a diplomat. Indeed, it’s outrageous that states haven’t figured out a robust framework to bring rogue diplomats to book.
The UN should code all serious crimes. Then, it should establish an international court for diplomats where such crimes will be tried. Further, diplomatic facilities, such as the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, that are accessories to crime must be sanctioned. Likewise, the UN should establish a fund where victims of abuse can draw compensation. The universal conscience should not brook the deification of ambassadors in the name of immunity. Indeed, we urgently need a reinvigorated treaty that will effectively dispense justice and tame the rogue envoys.