Member Publication

Arun Krishnan and Nithin Ramakrishnan, ‘Balancing Diplomatic Immunity: An Indian View beyond the Khorbragade Position’, in Marko Novakovic, Diplomatic Immunity: Evolution and Recent Country Developments, Palgrave Macmillan

Diplomatic immunity and its abuse has been a major area of discussion in the international law communities for long. The development of this discourse has reached a level of saturation in recent years and ideas in current focus appear overwhelmingly creative and technical. Most of these scholars start their thesis from the basic assumption that the diplomatic immunity is a necessary evil and an extension of this assumption that full protection of the diplomats is an unassailable principle of international law. The chapter, co-authored by me along with Arun Krishnan, raises a concern that absolute of diplomatic immunity is not a self-evident rule and carries no theoretical justification. Our inquiries into the historical accounts of Ancient Indian literature on statecraft, Indian positions at the Asian-African Legal Consultative Committee 1960 session and the various dispositions of the participating states in the Vienna Conference on Diplomatic Intercourse and Privileges 1966 prove the hypothesis.

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