Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (or VCCR) was completed in 1963 as a multilateral treaty to codify consular practices that developed through customary international law and numerous bilateral treaties.
The VCCR enumerates basic legal rights and duties of signatory States including
- the establishment and conduct of consular relations, by mutual consent, and
- the privileges and immunities of consular officers and offices from the laws of the “receiving State” (the country where the foreign consular office has been established).
Article 36 of the VCCR requires that foreign nationals who are arrested or detained be given notice "without delay" of their right to have their embassy or consulate notified of that arrest. The notice can be as simple as a fax, giving the person's name, the place of arrest, and, if possible, something about the reason for the arrest or detention. The police must fax that notice to the embassy or consulate, which can then check up on the person.
The United States is a party to this treaty, but it has not had a good historical track record of compliance (partly because under the U.S. federal system, implementation is up to the individual states in the great majority of cases, and the national government does not have direct authority to enforce state government compliance). Mexico sued the United States before the International Court of Justice, and Mexico won. (The case is called Avena, and you can find the text of it on the website for the International Court of Justice.)
In March of 2005, the United States pulled out of the Optional Protocol to the convention, which allows the International Court of Justice to intervene when detained foreign nationals are denied access to consular officials when imprisoned in a country that is a signatory to the convention. In June 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that foreign nationals who are deprived of the right to consular notification and access after an arrest may not use the treaty violation to suppress evidence obtained in police interrogation or belatedly raise legal challenges after trial (Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon).
