Authored By: Arshiya Alji
Middlesex University Dubai
INTRODUCTION
In August 2019, a nineteen-year-old motorcyclist named Harry Dunn was killed near RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire. The driver had been on the wrong side of the road. What should have been a straightforward criminal matter became a years-long legal battle exposing one of the most uncomfortable features of modern international law. The driver, Anne Sacoolas, was the wife of a United States intelligence officer. Within weeks, before any criminal proceedings could begin, she left the United Kingdom under diplomatic immunity claimed under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961.[1]
The United States was entitled to invoke immunity. The UK courts had no power to override it. The family had almost no legal remedy. The system worked exactly as it was designed to work. And that is the problem.
The Harry Dunn case is not an isolated incident. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) provided the most recent data to the Government in November 2025 reveals seventeen instances of alleged serious criminality – spanning child abuse, modern slavery, and domestic grievous bodily harm – were attributed to immunity-protected individuals in the UK during 2024 alone.[2] In 2023, the figure was nine. While the numbers rise, the framework remains stagnant.
This Article does not argue that diplomatic immunity should be abolished. It argues that its current scope – absolute, unreformed, and indifferent to the gravity of the harm caused – can no longer be justified.
THE VIENNA CONVENTION FRAMEWORK
The diplomatic immunity regime rests on a single foundational premise: that envoys must be free to discharge their functions without exposure to interference from the host state’s legal system. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations was implemented in 1961 and has since been ratified by 193 states[3] In the United Kingdom, it operates through the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964, which gives the Convention direct domestic legal effect and makes its immunity provisions enforceable in UK courts. Its central purpose is functional: to protect diplomatic agents from interference by host state authorities so that they can carry out their duties without impediment.
The Immunity Provisions: Article 31 and Its Gradations
The bluntness of Article 31 is striking. There is no gravity threshold, no public interest exception, no mechanism by which the receiving state can refuse to honour immunity even where evidence of serious criminality is overwhelming. The provision removes diplomatic agents from criminal jurisdictions entirely – the seriousness of the offence and strength of the evidence are irrelevant. If a person holds diplomatic immunity, they cannot be arrested, charged, or prosecuted in the host state while on post.[4]
Immunity from civil proceedings is slightly narrower. Article 31(1) provides broad civil immunity to diplomatic agents, but with three specific exceptions. The most relevant for present purposes is Article 31(1)(c), which excludes from immunity claims relating to “any professional or commercial activity exercised by the diplomatic agents in the receiving State outside his official functions”.[5] This commercial activity exception became the subject of significant judicial analysis in Basfar v Wong.
The Convention does not apply uniform immunity across all personnel. Full diplomatic agents enjoy absolute criminal immunity and broad civil immunity under Article 31. Administrative and technical staff – the category Anne Sacoolas fell into – receive full criminal immunity but limited civil immunity. Service staff enjoy immunity only for official acts.
The Waiver Mechanism: Article 32
Article 32 provides that immunity may be waived by the sending state.[6] Though nothing in the Convention’s text compels it to act. The waiver can be requested but never enforced.
The United Kingdom made repeated requests for the United States to waive Sacoolas’s immunity. The US refused for years. As the Court of Appeal confirmed in R (Dunn) v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs [2022], the courts have no power to override a properly invoked immunity.[7] A safety valve that can be permanently closed by the state that benefits from it is not, in any meaningful sense, a safety valve.
Persona Non Grata: Article 9
Declaring a diplomat persona non grata – meaning formally unwelcome and subject to removal – under Article 9 may remove the offender from the jurisdiction, but it provides no remedy for the victim and no mechanism for accountability.[8]
Having established the scope of the immunity framework and its significant remedial limitations, this article now turns to the Harry Dunn case, which exposed those limitations in the most direct and human terms.
III. THE HARRY DUNN CASE
Facts
On 27 August 2019, Anne Sacoolas was driving near RAF Croughton when she struck and fatally injured Harry Dunn, who was riding a motorcycle. Sacoolas derived her immunity from her husband’s status as a US intelligence officer stationed at the base under a 1995 bilateral agreement.[9] She gave initial indications that she intended to stay. Those indications proved to be hollow within a fortnight. The United States then invoked immunity on her behalf and she departed for the US.
The Foreign Office later acknowledged a failure to advise Sacoolas of her obligation under Article 41 of the Vienna Convention, which requires all persons enjoying immunities to respect the laws of the receiving state.[10] The Convention’s protective provisions come paired with duties – and the failure to communicate those duties to Sacoolas was a contributing factor in what followed.
The Court of Appeal Decision
In R (Dunn), the family argued that immunity was not properly extended to dependents of intelligence officers, and that the Foreign Secretary’s acceptance of the immunity claim was unlawful.[11] The Court of Appeal rejected both arguments. The immunity had been properly invoked, and no court could force a waiver. Whatever one thinks of the outcome, it was legally correct – and that is precisely the problem.
The December 2022 ‘Resolution’
In December 2022, Sacoolas pleaded guilty by videolink to causing death by careless driving at the Old Bailey.[12] She was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment, suspended for twelve months. She attended neither the plea nor the sentencing in person. She has never returned to the United Kingdom and has never served a period of custody in any jurisdiction.
The resolution resulted from a political concession, not from any mechanism within the Vienna Convention. Had that concession not been made, the legal framework had nothing further to offer.
The Dunn case concerned a single high-profile incident. The following section examines a more systematic pattern of immunity abuse – one that affects an invisible and deeply vulnerable population.
DOMESTIC WORKERS AND THE LIMITS OF JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION
A Systematic Pattern of Harm
A 2023 investigative report series by Rappler, supported by the Pulitzer Center, documented cases across Europe, Asia, and North America in which diplomatic personnel have used immunity to shield themselves from accountability for the exploitation of domestic workers – including forced confinements, wage theft, physical abuse, and conditions amounting to modern slavery.[13] The vulnerability is structural: immigration status is bound to the employing diplomat, and the Convention forecloses any meaningful legal avenue. For many, raising a complaint means risking the right to remain.
The FCDO’s 2024 data confirms this: three of the seventeen recorded offences involved allegations of modern slavery against diplomats from Equatorial Guinea, Uganda, and Oman – and these are only the formally reported cases.[14]
Basfar v Wong and Reyes v Al-Malki
In Basfar v Wong [2022], the Supreme Court considered whether profiting from forced labour constituted a commercial activity under Article 31(1)(c).[15] Ms Wong had been trafficked to the UK, confined, unpaid, and coerced into labour. That is not employment, it is a commercial extraction of value from a person treated as property. The majority held that profiting from coerced labour rendered the arrangement commercial within the meaning of Article 31(1)(c), thereby displacing Mr Basfar’s immunity in civil proceedings.
The groundwork was laid in Reyes v Al-Malki [2017], a case involving near-identical circumstances – a domestic worker exploited by a Saudi diplomat posted to the UK.[16] The Court stopped short of resolving the commercial activity question because the diplomat’s departure had caused his immunity to lapse before proceedings were determined. The majority in Basfar adopted a purposive interpretation of Article 31(1)(c), reflecting the increasing recognition of trafficking and modern slavery within international law.
The significance of Basfar is sharpened by a domestic statutory irony. Parliament enacted the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to criminalise exactly the conduct described in that case. Yet the Vienna Convention means that a diplomatic agent who commits those offences cannot be prosecuted under it. The legislature created the crime; the treaty prevents the prosecution.
The Remaining Gaps
However, Basfar remains limited. It applies only to civil proceedings, requires exploitation amounting to modern slavery, and depends on litigation that many vulnerable workers cannot realistically pursue. The decision opened a door. For most victims, the door remains effectively closed.
The limitations of Basfar point to a deeper structural problem – one that requires engaging directly with the UK’s obligations under the ECHR.
THE ECHR INCOMPATIBILITY ARGUMENT
Positive Obligations
The ECHR does not only prohibit states from directly violating individual rights. It also imposes positive obligations – duties on states to take active steps to protect individuals from serious harm inflicted by third parties. In the UK, those obligations are enforceable in domestic courts through the Human Rights Act 1998.
When Harry Dunn was killed and no prosecution followed for years, the UK was not merely failing a family – it was failing to discharge a binding legal obligation. Article 2 imposes not only a duty to protect life but a procedural obligation to conduct an effective investigation into deaths – one capable of leading to the identification and punishment of those responsible.[17] That obligation does not dissolve because the person responsible holds a diplomatic passport. Article 3’s prohibition on inhuman and degrading treatment extends beyond direct state conduct – Strasbourg has read it into a duty to shield individuals from equivalent harm inflicted by non-state actors.[18] Article 4 goes further still: in Siliadin v France (2006), the European Court held that states must maintain criminal law frameworks capable of deterring, investigating, and prosecuting conduct amounting to slavery or forced labour.[19][20]
The Direct Conflict
The Convention compels the United Kingdom to refrain from exercising criminal jurisdiction over diplomatically immune individuals. The ECHR obliges the United Kingdom to take active steps – including through criminal prosecution – to protect individuals within its jurisdiction from serious harm. When the person causing that harm is diplomatically immune, these two bodies of law are in direct conflict. The UK cannot fully comply with both at the same time.
This conflict is not abstract. Harry Dunn’s case, under Article 2, required a prosecution capable of delivering accountability. The Vienna Convention prevented it for years. In the domestic worker cases, Article 4 demands functional criminal law. The Vienna Convention hands the perpetrators a mechanism to neutralise it entirely.
The Counterarguments
The Strasbourg court has generally been reluctant to hold that established rules of international law violate the ECHR. However, Al-Adsani v United Kingdom (2002) concerned civil proceedings under Article 6.[21] The positive obligations arising under Articles 2, 3, and 4 are arguably stronger and less easily displaced, particularly where serious harm or exploitation is involved. Even if the Vienna Convention framework does not technically breach the ECHR, it nonetheless produces outcomes difficult to reconcile with the values that human rights law is intended to protect.
A 1961 Treaty in a 2026 World
The Vienna Convention was drafted in 1961, before the positive obligations doctrine had developed as an enforceable body of Strasbourg jurisprudence. The drafters were thinking about protecting diplomats from politically motivated interference – not about migrant domestic workers or the family of a nineteen-year-old motorcyclist in Northamptonshire.
A legal instrument that was written for a different world, which has not been substantially amended since 1961, and which now produces outcomes that sit in direct tension with the UK’s human rights obligations, is not one that should be defended without question. The failure to reform it is a political choice, and that choice has a human cost.
THE CASE FOR REFORM
The structural deficiencies identified above are not without remedy. This article proposes three targeted reforms, none of which require the dismantling of the Vienna Convention framework.
The most urgent is mandatory waiver. The Dunn case demonstrated that a sending state can indefinitely refuse to waive immunity for conduct as serious as causing death, without legal consequence. What is required is an enforceable bilateral commitment – with the US and other major partners – that waivers will be granted where a diplomatic agent or dependent is credibly accused of an offence carrying a custodial sentence. This requires political will, not Convention amendment.
The second gap concerns civil exceptions. Basfar set the threshold at the extreme end: exploitation must amount to modern slavery before immunity is displaced. Where a diplomat employs someone in a wholly private capacity – outside any official functions – that relationship has no claim to diplomatic protection. The logic of Article 31(1)(c) already points in this direction: it was crafted to keep private commerce outside immunity’s reach, and personal employment arrangements are private commerce. The Swiss Supreme Court moved in this direction in November 2025.[22] There is no principled reason why the UK threshold should remain higher.
The third gap is remedial. Where immunity cannot be displaced, the sending state should bear financial responsibility for harm caused by its immune personnel. This would separate immunity from prosecution from immunity from accountability.
Each of these reforms is achievable through bilateral agreement without requiring universal amendment of the Vienna Convention.
VII. CONCLUSION
Diplomatic immunity serves a legitimate purpose – this article never disputed that. But legitimacy requires proportionality, and proportionality requires that a framework justify its human cost. The Vienna Convention was designed to protect diplomacy: to insulate the ambassador from the political pressure of the receiving state. It was not designed to protect a diplomat who trafficked a domestic worker, or to insulate from accountability a driver who kills a teenager and leaves the jurisdiction before charges can be brought.
Basfar v Wong demonstrates that courts will interpret the Convention’s exceptions purposively where justice demands it. But judicial creativity is a symptom of legislative failure, not a substitute for it. The Vienna Convention, in its unreformed state, remains a shield from serious harm. That is a choice the UK has the tools to revisit.
The Vienna Convention was designed to protect diplomacy. Not to protect harm. The question the law must now answer is how many more Harry Dunns it will take before the political will to distinguish between those two things finally arrives.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cases
Al-Adsani v United Kingdom (2002) 34 EHRR 11.
Basfar v Wong [2022] UKSC 20, [2023] AC 300.
R (Dunn) v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs [2022] EWCA Civ 673.
Reyes v Al-Malki [2017] UKSC 61, [2018] AC 826.
Siliadin v France (2006) 43 EHRR 16.
Treaties and International Instruments
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights, as amended).
Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (adopted 18 April 1961, entered into force 24 April 1964) 500 UNTS 95.
UK Legislation
Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964
Human Rights Act 1998
Modern Slavery Act 2015
Government and Institutional Materials
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, ‘Serious and Significant Offences Allegedly Committed by People Entitled to Diplomatic Immunity in 2024’ (CP 1371, November 2025).
Reports and Online Sources
BBC News, ‘Anne Sacoolas Gets Suspended Jail Term for Fatal Crash’ (BBC News, 8 December 2022) <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-63899307\> accessed 26 May 2026.
Santos AP, Abad M and Macaraeg P, ‘Diplomatic Immunity and Impunity: How Diplomats Get Away With Exploiting Domestic Workers’ (Rappler, August–October 2023) <https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/investigative/diplomatic-immunity-impunity-abuses-migrant-workers-series/\> accessed 28 May 2026.
Santos AP and Abad M, ‘Swiss Court: Diplomatic Immunity Not a Shield for Domestic Worker Abuse’ (Rappler, 1 November 2025) <https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/swiss-court-diplomatic-immunity-not-shield-domestic-worker-abuse/\> accessed 28 May 2026.
[1] Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (adopted 18 April 1961, entered into force 24 April 1964) 500 UNTS 95.
[2] Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, ‘Serious and Significant Offences Allegedly Committed by People Entitled to Diplomatic Immunity in 2024’ (CP 1371, November 2025).
[3] Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (n 1).
[4] Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (n 1) art 31.
[5] ibid art 31(1)(c).
[6] Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (n 1) art 32.
[7] R (Dunn) v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs [2022] EWCA Civ 673.
[8] Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (n 1) art 9.
[9] R (Dunn) v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs [2022] EWCA Civ 673 [14]–[19].
[10] Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (n 1) art 41.
[11] R (Dunn) (n 7).
[12]BBC News, ‘Anne Sacoolas Gets Suspended Jail Term for Fatal Crash’ (BBC News, 8 December 2022) <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-63899307\> accessed 26 May 2026.
[13] Ana P Santos, Michelle Abad and Pauline Macaraeg, ‘Diplomatic Immunity and Impunity: How Diplomats Get Away With Exploiting Domestic Workers’ (Rappler, August–October 2023) <https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/investigative/diplomatic-immunity-impunity-abuses-migrant-workers-series/\> accessed 28 May 2026.
[14] Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (n 2).
[15] Basfar v Wong [2022] UKSC 20, [2023] AC 300.
[16] Reyes v Al-Malki [2017] UKSC 61, [2018] AC 826.
[17] European Convention on Human Rights, art 2.
[18] European Convention on Human Rights, art 3.
[19] European Convention on Human Rights, art 4.
[20] Siliadin v France (2006) 43 EHRR 16.
[21] Al-Adsani v United Kingdom (2002) 34 EHRR 11.
[22] Ana P Santos and Michelle Abad, ‘Swiss Court: Diplomatic Immunity Not a Shield for Domestic Worker Abuse’ (Rappler, 1 November 2025) <https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/swiss-court-diplomatic-immunity-not-shield-domestic-worker-abuse/\>accessed 28 May 2026.
