It has been approximately fifty to sixty years since the constitution of United Nation Charter on June 26th, 1945 that arouse the independence of new states. The emergence of the new-born states and the creations of many international institutions have become the primary reason why institution of diplomacy appear.
The institution of diplomacy has always been regarded as of fundamental importance to the proper functioning of international relations. In spite of the overwhelming advances in technology, which have, in the last century, changed the whole landscape of international relations, state remains firm in its belief that the exchange of diplomatic representatives is critical to the methodology of inter-state relations.
However, the progress of diplomatic relation between one state to another is not only considered as the result of overwhelming development of technology, but also by the interest of one state in another state that may give mutual benefit for one-another, or in the other term, by looking for what has been explained as “diplomatic representative for methodology” that can be defined as the way of a state to strengthen the relation between it and other states. This reason, create another rational reason why the existence of diplomatic relation is in rapid growth.
The activity of diplomatic relation will never be separated by its component, the diplomatic personnel, or latter called as diplomatic agent. Such individuals are defined in theVienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961as the head of the mission or a member of the diplomatic staff of the mission, which latter category includes members of the staff of a diplomatic mission having diplomatic rank.According to Wilson, the category of diplomatic agents, as well as including “ambassadors, ministers and counselors”, would include the secretary to the mission (although member of administrative and technical staff), attaches, and part-time diplomats, such as legal advisers, insofar as they are “performing diplomatic functions as a principal, and not an incidental part of their duties”. However, the concept of diplomatic agent covers a broader range of individuals than merely diplomatic agents.
Diplomatic agent: Right of Privilege and Right of Protection
In May 2006, the International Law Commission (ILC) adopted the articles on diplomatic protection by United Nations.These article largely codify existing customary law on the protection of nationals abroad by means of diplomatic protection. Diplomatic protection is premised on a fiction: the injury to an individual is treated as if it constituted an injury to the individual’s national state, thereby entitling the national state to espouse the claim. The legal fiction is clearly stated in Article 4 United Nations charter in 2006 as the protection of individuals:
“For the purposes of diplomatic protection of a natural person, a state of nationality means a state whose nationality that person has acquired, in accordance with the law of that state, by birth, descent, naturalization, succession, of States or in any other manner, not inconsistent with international law.”
Article 3 of the Vienna Convention in 1961 about Diplomatic Relation lists, as one of the functions of a diplomatic mission:
“protecting in the receiving state the interests of the sending state and its nationals, within the limits permitted by international law”.
Article 29 of the Vienna Convention about Diplomatic Relation in 1961:
“The person of a diplomatic agent shall be inviolable. He shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention. The receiving state shall treat him with due respect and shall take all appropriate steps to prevent any attack on his person, freedom or dignity.”
It will be recalled that the provisions of Article 29 apply directly to “members of the family of the diplomatic agent forming part of his household”, and to “members of administrative and technical staff of the mission, together with members of their families forming part of their respective householder”.
In addition, Vienna Convention was considered as a progressive convention ever made and was rapidly used as the primary sources of diplomatic and consular law as between states.
Diplomatic agent on the Perspective of Terrorists: Symbolic Figure?
The individuals who work as diplomatic agents, as those who are explained and whose some of the rights of protection have been told above, will automatically become symbol of each state concerning the interests and needs of the state they represent for. This condition creates possibility of the attack on the individuals who work as the diplomatic agent.
The attack by terrorist is impossible to happen without reasons, then, what kind of reasons is used by the terrorist to attack diplomatic agents?
Diplomatic agent, as the symbolic figure of state, will automatically take care of the interests, political views and needs of the state. By this reasons, it is reliable to say that the more contradict the policies with the terrorist are, the more dangerous the situation of the diplomatic agents of the state will be.
According to figures provided by the US Department of State, a staggering 2.345 terrorist incidents have been directed against diplomats or diplomatic establishments since 1980.The statistics behind this stark figure reveal that diplomats and diplomatic establishment have, in fact, been less and less frequently targeted by terrorist organizations in recent year.
Although the United States was the primary target of terrorist attacks on diplomatic premises at this time, it is clear that the problem was not unique to the United States. In the years following the publication of the Inman Report in 1985, it was said that a number of significant bombings of other states’ embassy premises occurred around the world. These included, most notably, the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina which resulted in 29 death and 242 injuries, and the attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan which killed 16 persons and injured 60.
In the aftermath of the tragedy of American Embassy bombing in Beirut, a review of “the security problems that confront the United States in continuing to do diplomatic business overseas as well as in providing adequate reciprocal protection for foreigners stationed or visiting the United States on diplomatic business” was made by the United States government.
Terrorists, the more they widened their range of targets, fewer attacks have been perpetrated on diplomatic personnel. According to Inman, the only problem for American officials abroad was terrorism:
“The assaults have become bloodier and the casualty toll higher. The fabric of international consensus has been strained as rogue states have entered the conflict, waging undeclared war by sponsoring and supporting terrorism against the diplomats of nations whose policies they oppose. In sum, what we have seen in recent years is an expansion of the threat from physical violence against diplomat – often private, incidental, even furtive – to the beginnings of calculated terror campaigns, psychological conflict waged by nation or sub-group against nation, with an ever broadening range of targets, weapons, and tactics.”
Terrorism is really uneasy to be placed in coherent framework. In national legal orders, a great variety of solutions can be found concerning the repression of terrorism. Furthermore it must be remember that terrorist crimes may present some element of trans-nationality, antecedent, concomitant, or successive to their consummation. In such cases a need for international co-operation arises and the situation is likely to become extremely complicated. It is known that inter-state cooperation meets peculiar problems in the criminal field, especially when politically sensitive matters are at stake.
Given this background, in the absence of a comprehensive strategy, for a long time the interest of the international community in defining mechanism of co-operation aimed at improving the repression of terrorism generated nothing but selective and random interventions (the so-called piecemeal approach). This is particularly evident at the universal level: the UN and some specialized or related agencies adopted some conventions which dealt with specific aspect of the phenomenon, but did not solve the problem regarding the need to punish any terrorist activities. The problem is not only stuck on the so-called not-visionary conventions, but also thank to what persons (or even institutions) presume about terrorist. It is, slowly but necessarily must be avoided, create ‘immature’ description about what terrorism is.
The immature description of terrorism, seems become an absolute notion that there is no correlation between the needs to keep sovereignty of state from terrorism, and more likely the needs to keep individuals (society) from insecure condition.
Let’s return to the perspective of the unknown description of crime called as terrorism that has been explained above and the relation between the unclear ‘line’ and category of terrorism with what had happened with the diplomatic personnel (or agent). while the writer tried to make analogical thinking on his own, the reason why there is still happening what the writer call as terrorism in diplomatic relation around the world (with the latest case was the bombing of Indonesia’s Embassy in France), was because the still-failure conventions from many international organizations.
As what Di Filippo said, since the regulations or conventions of international organizations are only covering ‘what terrorism is’ with no further prevention or any preventive action on anything categorized as the ‘symptom’ of terrorism, it creates ambiguity for defining what terrorism is. And different ways between states to secure their territory from terrorism, cause Diplomatic personnel to be a ‘sitting duck’ for terrorists. Since terrorism is not kind of natural disasters that can not be prevented, one of the ways to prevent diplomatic insecurity caused by the attack of the terrorist on diplomatic personnel is, according to the writers, by creating not only new regulations explaining further definitions and further progressive prevention (like Vienna Convention in 1961 and 1963 that could cover beyond what had happened at that time), but also strict sanctions for any state that could not protect the diplomatic personnel from another state.
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