Opened for signature at Vienna and now binding on 193 Parties: the treaty behind diplomatic privileges

Background

Rules on how embassies work, and on the privileges and immunities their staff enjoy, come mainly from the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. A United Nations conference on diplomatic intercourse and immunities, meeting at the Neue Hofburg in Vienna, adopted the text on 14 April 1961, and it was opened for signature in the same city four days later. Article 51 governs when the treaty began to bind, which it did on 24 April 1964; the Secretary-General registered it on 24 June 1964 under number 7310, and the text appears in volume 500 of the United Nations Treaty Series. Sixty States signed, and the depositary now records 193 Parties, which makes it one of the most widely accepted treaties anywhere. The same conference adopted two optional protocols, one on the acquisition of nationality and the other on the compulsory settlement of disputes, together with a Final Act. Austria keeps that Final Act in the archives of its foreign ministry, while the Convention and the protocols went to the United Nations Secretary-General. In the United Kingdom the Convention was given the force of law by the Diplomatic Privileges Act, whose schedule sets out the articles that apply there.