The Economist: Why are embassies supposed to be inviolable?

The scene had the trappings of a cartel bust. On April 5th Ecuadorean police, clad in balaclavas and carrying riot shields, arrived in armoured trucks to arrest Jorge Glas. But Mr Glas is not a gang leader—he is a former vice-president of Ecuador. He took refuge in Mexico’s embassy in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, in December to avoid being arrested on charges of corruption—and was granted asylum. Ecuador barged in and grabbed him anyway.

Mexico condemned the arrest as an “authoritarian act” and recalled its diplomats. Ecuador’s breach of diplomatic norms comes at a time when the inviolability of embassy buildings is under increasing strain. Days before the raid, the Iranian government warned Israel that its embassies were “no longer safe” after a suspected Israeli air strikedestroyed an Iranian consular building in Damascus, Syria’s capital. What protections are afforded to diplomatic premises and why do they matter?

Norms for how governments should treat foreign embassies stretch back centuries. Ancient Greek and Roman governments accorded protections to foreign envoys and their missions. In 1961 the rules were formalised in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Article 22 states that diplomatic premises are inviolable. Local police or security forces must not enter an embassy without the consent of the ambassador or mission chief. The host country is obliged to protect the premises. People working there are immune from prosecution under the host country’s laws. Some governments grumble that this allows embassies to shelter seedy characters. But the rules are important: they allow diplomats to work without fear of being harassed or taken hostage, and can help preserve stability between countries with testy relations.

The consequences of breaching inviolability can be severe. America’s State Department considers an attack on one of its embassies to be an attack on America itself. In fact the special status of embassies has only occasionally been seriously tested. In 1979, with the backing of Iran’s new revolutionary Islamist government, student activists scaled the walls of the American embassy in Tehran and held hostage more than 50 American diplomats for 444 days. The International Court of Justice (icj) swiftly ruled against Iran. Relations between the two countries have never recovered, and Iran remains an international pariah.

Some governments have sought to crack down on abuses of inviolability. Following the murder of Yvonne Fletcher, a police officer killed in a London square in 1984 by a shooter in the Libyan embassy, Britain passed a law to remove protection for diplomatic premises that were being misused. To date, the law has only been used only once, to clear squatters who had commandeered the long-vacant Cambodian embassy. The British government considered using the act again in 2012 after Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, sought refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on charges of sexual assault. (Those charges were later dropped, but Mr Assange was arrested by British police after Ecuador revoked his asylum in 2019, and is fighting extradition to America, where he is charged with hacking government computers.)

There are exceptions to inviolability under international law, too. The Vienna Convention only refers to the responsibilities of the host state, but says nothing about a third-party attack. Also, under the laws of armed conflict, embassies lose their protections if they are used for military purposes. That may mean that the recent strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus was legal; a spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces called the annexe that was destroyed a “military building […] disguised as a civilian building”. Iran may try to claim, falsely, that the same is true of Israeli embassies, and that attacks on them would be similarly justified.

Mexico announced it would file a complaint against Ecuador at the ICJ. The court is likely to rule in its favour, but its ability to punish Ecuador may be limited. Other countries have condemned the raid, which may signal a raft of incoming sanctions. Ecuador could also be booted out of the Organisation of American States, a regional talking-shop. But the country’s strongman president, Daniel Noboa, seems to be betting that the raid will boost his popularity domestically. By nabbing the disgraced former vice-president, he is hoping to burnish his reputation for being tough on crime. Yet he is also adding to global lawlessness.