Diplomatic Asylum from the Perspective of Self-Contained Regimes

Abstract More than 70 years since the Asylum and Haya de la Torre judgments, diplomatic asylum has come back before the ICJ in the Glas Espinel case. The dispute provides an opportunity to reflect on the 1954 Caracas Convention on Diplomatic Asylum, which so far has not been thoroughly examined within international law scholarship. This paper argues that the asylum regime under the Caracas Convention shows similarities with a self-contained regime. The right of the State granting asylum to unilaterally assess the requirements for diplomatic asylum essentially precludes the operation of dispute settlement mechanisms and of secondary norms on the content and implementation of State responsibility. Building on the comparison with a self-contained regime, the question arises as to whether the asylum regime under the Caracas Convention might “fail”: to such failure, the asylum regime shows some resistance. Overall, the parallel is consistent with the essence of diplomatic asylum as a Latin-American institution.