Diplomatic mission

"Embassy" redirects here. For other uses, see Embassy (disambiguation).
Spanish embassy to the Holy See and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in Rome
Embassy of the United States in Helsinki, Finland
Multiple embassies in one location: The embassies of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden in a joint compound of Nordic Embassies in Berlin, Germany.
House of Sweden featuring Swedish as well as Icelandic and Liechtenstein diplomatic missions to the United States
Extraterritorialities
Earth
Space

A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state.[1] In practice, the phrase usually denotes an embassy or high commission, which is the main office of a country's diplomatic representatives to another country; it is usually, but not necessarily, based in the receiving state's capital city.[2] Consulates, on the other hand, are smaller diplomatic missions that are normally located in major cities of the receiving state (but can be located in the capital, typically when the sending country has no embassy in the receiving state). As well as being a diplomatic mission to the country in which it is situated, an embassy may also be a nonresident permanent mission to one or more other countries.[3][4][5][6]

The term embassy is sometimes used interchangeably with chancery, the physical office or site of a diplomatic mission.[7] Consequently, the terms "embassy residence" and "embassy office" are used to distinguish between the ambassador's residence and the chancery.

  1. ^ "What is a Foreign Mission /Chancery?". www.state.gov. Archived from the original on 2023-01-14. Retrieved 2017-08-25.
  2. ^ "What is a U.S. Embassy? – National Museum of American Diplomacy". Archived from the original on 2022-01-05. Retrieved 2022-01-05.
  3. ^ Tom Nierop, Systems and Regions in Global Politics (Wiley, John and Sons 1994 ISBN 978-0-471-94942-8), p. 67.
  4. ^ "The Russian Federation has diplomatic relations with a total of 187 countries, but some of them – mainly for financial reasons – maintain non-resident embassies in other countries", International Affairs Archived 2023-11-11 at the Wayback Machine, issues 4–6 (Znanye Pub. House, 2006), p. 78
  5. ^ "Of Chile's 109 foreign diplomatic missions in 1988, no fewer than 31 were on a non-residential basis, while 17 of the 63 missions in Santiago were non-resident" (Deon Geldenhuys, Isolated States: A Comparative Analysis (University of Cambridge 1990 ISBN 0-521-40268-9), p. 158).
  6. ^ "America's diplomatic mission to (Saudi Arabia) was changed from non-resident to permanent Minister in Jeddah" (Fahad M. Al-Nafjan, The Origins of Saudi-American Relations, page not numbered).
  7. ^ "What is a Foreign Mission /Chancery?". 2009-2017.state.gov. Archived from the original on 2023-01-14. Retrieved 2022-01-05.