Forthcoming in the Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law (27) and in view of the then pending decision in the Asylum case. Yepes, on the other hand, was invited to prepare a working paper on the right of political asylum to be presented during the Commission’s second session,32 which would again be postponed and in the end never submitted. Moreover, albeit diplomatic asylum would eventually resurface in other contexts, states were quick to discard it for being ‘too controversial’. At the request of the General Assembly,33 the ILC would deal a final blow to diplomatic asylum while excluding it from the 1958 Draft Articles on Diplomatic Intercourse and Immunities. Although Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice proposed the inclusion of a humanitarian exception to the provision on the inviolability of diplomatic premises,34 the Commission decided to reject it on the basis that diplomatic asylum fell outside the scope of the topic. 35 In the end, the grant of asylum in legations was made contingent on the existence of regional or bilateral agreements between the concerned states. 36 This formula was eventually maintained in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961). For example, while Art. 41(1) of the Convention incorporates the principle of non-interference in internal affairs and a duty to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving state, Art. 41(3) provides that legations should not be used ‘in any manner incompatible with the functions of the mission’. It thus leaves no room for the granting of diplomatic asylum, except by virtue of UN ILC, ‘Summary Records and Documents of the Second Session, Including the Report of the Commission to the General Assembly’ in Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1950, vol. II (Part Two) UN Doc. A/CN. 4/SER.A/1950/Add.1, at 366. 33 In the debates on the Yugoslav draft resolution that asked the ILC to prioritize the codification of the law on diplomatic intercourse and immunities, Colombia proposed an amendment asking the Commission to also consider the right of asylum. The majority of states, which felt that the right of asylum (in all its forms) should be studied separately on another occasion, rejected this proposal. See UNGA, ‘Official Records of the General Assembly, Seventh Session, Annexes, Agenda Item 58’ (23 April 1953) UN Doc. A/C.6/L.251. 34 Fitzmaurice proposed the following amendment: ‘[e]xcept to the extent recognized by any established local usage, or to save life or prevent grave physical injury in the face of an immediate threat or emergency, the premises of a mission shall not be used for giving shelter to persons charged with offences under local law, not being charges preferred on political grounds’, see UN ILC, ‘Summary Records and Documents of the Ninth Session’ in Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1957, vol. I (Part One) UN Doc. A/CN.4/SER.A/1957, at 54. 35 Ibid., at 57. 36 UN ILC, ‘Draft Articles on Diplomatic Intercourse and Immunities, with Commentaries’ in Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1958, vol. II (Part Two) UN Doc. A/CN.4/SER.A/1958/Add.l, at 104. 32 9 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4816199

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