Head of State immunity stops the courts of one country from trying the person who embodies another, and international law gives it in two forms. Personal immunity covers everything done while the office is held, and functional immunity covers only official acts once it has been left.
Functional immunity is the part of the doctrine that has been argued over for the last twenty years, and the International Law Commission closed its own part of that argument in 2026. The Commission adopted its draft articles on the immunity of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction on second reading, seventeen of them with commentaries, nineteen years after it took the topic up. It adopted draft article 7, which lists the crimes for which functional immunity is not available, on a recorded vote rather than by consensus. A vote at that stage of the work records that the Commission’s own members disagree about what the customary rule already is.
The disagreement runs at the edges of a rule whose purpose almost nobody disputes. States are legally equal, so the courts of one cannot sit in judgment on another, and the person holding the highest office is treated as the State itself for this purpose. A head of State who could be arrested on a foreign prosecutor’s warrant could not travel, negotiate or attend a summit, and relations between States would then turn on the charging decisions of whichever country he had landed in. The immunity protects the office and the function rather than the individual, which is why the personal form ends on the day the office does.
What that purpose does not settle is whether the immunity survives a warrant issued by an international court instead of a foreign prosecutor. The International Criminal Court answers that it does not, and the States that have never joined its Statute answer that it does. In 2026 the Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber II found that Tajikistan had failed to comply with its obligations by receiving the President of Russia without arresting him on a warrant that had been outstanding since 2023, and referred the failure to the Assembly of States Parties. Mongolia had been found in the same position in 2024, on the same reasoning.
Whether a host country must act on a warrant of that kind is easiest to follow on one set of facts. The serving president of a State that never joined the Rome Statute accepts an invitation to a summit in a country that did join it, and an International Criminal Court warrant for his arrest has been outstanding for two years. A group representing victims petitions the host country’s high court to direct the police to execute the warrant while he is on its soil.
The host government does not dispute that the warrant exists or that it is a party to the Statute. Its law officers argue that arresting a serving head of State of a country outside the Statute would put it in breach of a duty it owes that country under customary international law, and that the Statute itself recognises the difficulty in article 98(1). The victims’ group argues that article 27(2) removed the immunity altogether, so there is no duty left to breach.
Two obligations then bind the host State at the same time, because it owes the Court the arrest and surrender of a person named in a warrant it has undertaken to execute. It also owes the visiting State the treatment that customary international law gives a serving head of State, which is a duty the visiting State never agreed to give up. The Court answered that conflict in the Al-Bashir appeal and repeated the answer in its findings against Mongolia and Tajikistan, holding that no such immunity exists before it and that the host State must arrest. The States on the other side read article 98(1) as written for exactly this situation, and no court outside the Statute has ever ruled between the two readings.
Serving heads of State before a foreign criminal court
A serving head of State cannot be prosecuted in the criminal courts of another country for anything at all, and the case for that rule is stronger than the impunity it produces. The immunity attaches to the office and not to the conduct, so the gravity of the charge does nothing to lift it. A court that took jurisdiction would be holding that its own State may judge the head of an equal State, which is the one thing sovereign equality denies it.
This personal immunity is often confused with the immunity of the State itself, and the two are separate rules with separate tests. State immunity protects a government against claims arising from its governmental acts, and it has been narrowed over the last century so that commercial dealings fall outside it. Personal immunity protects a named individual against the exercise of criminal jurisdiction, and it has not been narrowed in the same way. The basis on which a court claims jurisdiction is therefore only the first question; whether it may exercise that jurisdiction over this particular defendant is a second one.
International lawyers call the personal form immunity ratione personae, which means immunity by reason of the person, and the functional form immunity ratione materiae, immunity by reason of the subject matter. The first is procedural and complete while it lasts, barring arrest, detention and the service of criminal process even for conduct that had nothing to do with the office. The second is narrower and permanent, and it attaches to official acts whoever performed them.
Officeholders who carry personal immunity under international law
Three officeholders carry the personal immunity in the courts of a foreign State, and international law has been reluctant to extend the list beyond them. They are the head of State, the head of government and the minister for foreign affairs, described together as the troika. The International Law Commission named the same three in draft article 3 of its draft articles on the immunity of State officials, and the commentary treats the list as closed rather than illustrative.
The immunity covers acts performed in a private capacity as well as official ones. It also covers conduct that took place before the officeholder took office, which is the feature that most clearly shows the immunity is about the position rather than the behaviour. A head of State accused of a fraud committed years before an election is as immune during his term as one accused of ordering an atrocity in office, and the two claims stand or fall together.
Inviolability of the person comes with that personal immunity, and it operates before any question of trial arises. The officeholder cannot be arrested or detained by the authorities of the foreign State, and criminal process cannot be served on him there. That is why the disputes in this area are usually about warrants and airport transits rather than about verdicts.
The International Court of Justice has not extended the list when it was invited to, and the invitation came in Certain Questions of Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters, decided on 4 June 2008. Djibouti argued there that its procureur de la République and the head of its national security service held the same personal immunity as its President, then abandoned that argument during the oral proceedings in favour of functional immunity. The Court found nothing to support a personal immunity for either official, and it recorded in the same judgment that a head of State enjoys full immunity from criminal jurisdiction and inviolability. Senior officials outside the troika may still claim functional immunity for their official acts, which is a different and weaker protection.
Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 and the immunity of a serving minister
Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 is the judgment that states the rule, and the International Court of Justice decided it on 14 February 2002. A Belgian investigating judge had issued an international arrest warrant against Abdulaye Yerodia Ndombasi, who was then the incumbent Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, alleging grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity committed before he took office. Belgium circulated the warrant internationally through Interpol. The Congo sued Belgium at the Court.
The Court held that the issue and international circulation of the warrant violated the immunity from criminal jurisdiction and the inviolability that the Minister enjoyed, and it ordered Belgium to cancel the warrant. It reached that conclusion without deciding whether Belgium had jurisdiction over the alleged crimes in the first place, which is why the case says a great deal about immunity and comparatively little about universal jurisdiction. The immunity question came first and disposed of the dispute.
The Court also set out, in paragraph 61 of the judgment, four situations in which an incumbent or former minister for foreign affairs may still be tried, so that immunity does not become impunity. His own State may prosecute him in its own courts. His State may waive the immunity on his behalf.
The remaining two situations arrive only once the office has changed hands or the forum has changed. After he leaves office a foreign court may try him for acts committed before or after his term, and for private acts committed during it. He may also be tried by certain international criminal courts where they have jurisdiction, and that fourth situation is the one every later argument has been fought over.
Former heads of State after the personal immunity lapses
Once a head of State leaves office the personal immunity goes with it, and what survives is a functional immunity covering official acts alone. The change is abrupt rather than gradual. On the last day of the term a foreign court can do nothing at all; on the first day afterwards it can try the same person for anything he did in a private capacity, and for anything he did before he took office.
Two categories of conduct therefore become triable the moment the term ends, and the Court in Arrest Warrant named both of them. Acts committed before and after the period in office lose their protection completely, because the personal immunity that covered them has expired and they were never official acts. Private acts committed during the term lose it as well, for the same reason. What remains protected is the official act, on the reasoning that a foreign court trying an official act would in substance be trying the State that authorised it.
That residue is what draft article 7 of the International Law Commission’s draft articles is directed at. The provision lists the crimes for which functional immunity does not apply, among them genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and enforced disappearance, and the Commission’s position is that a former official cannot claim that such conduct was an official function. The Commission adopted the provision on 28 April 2026 by a recorded vote, and completed the second reading of the whole set on 15 May 2026. Several States had argued in the Sixth Committee that the list reflected what the law ought to be rather than what it is, and the vote is the record of that objection rather than its defeat.
Pinochet and the immunity of a former head of State for torture
Pinochet is the decision that made the functional immunity of a former head of State a live question in a national court. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the former head of State of Chile, was arrested in London in October 1998 on a warrant issued by a Spanish magistrate, who sought his extradition on charges including torture and conspiracy to torture committed in Chile during his rule. He argued that a former head of State is immune from the criminal jurisdiction of the United Kingdom in respect of acts done while he held office.
The House of Lords rejected that argument on 24 March 1999, in the third of the three decisions the case produced. A majority held that torture, as international law defines it, cannot be an official function attracting immunity, because the definition itself requires the act to be committed by or with the acquiescence of a public official. Reading the immunity so as to cover it would leave the Convention against Torture with nothing to operate on in the one class of case it was drafted for.
The majority then narrowed the outcome sharply on a point of timing. Immunity was lost only for conduct after 8 December 1988, the date on which the United Kingdom ratified the Convention against Torture, by which time Spain and Chile were parties to it as well and section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 had made torture committed anywhere an offence triable in the United Kingdom. Most of the conduct alleged against him fell before that date and dropped out of the extradition request. He was never tried, because the Home Secretary released him on medical grounds in March 2000 and he returned to Chile.
The decision carries two limits of its own. It is the judgment of a national court applying an extradition statute and a treaty that the United Kingdom, Spain and Chile had all ratified, rather than a statement of customary international law binding on anyone else. And its reasoning is tied to the definition of torture, so it does not transfer automatically to crimes whose definitions do not require an official actor.
The decision still changed the terms of the argument. Before it, the functional immunity of a former head of State was widely treated as complete for anything done in office; after it, the question in every later case has been which crimes fall outside the official function, which is the question draft article 7 tries to answer in a list.
Head of State immunity before an international criminal court
Head of State immunity is not available before an international criminal court, and the reason given is that such a court is not a foreign State exercising jurisdiction over an equal. The rule rests on the character of the forum rather than on the gravity of the charge. Where the forum is a court created by States acting together, the objection that one State is judging another has nothing to attach to.
That reasoning about the character of the forum has a long documentary history in the founding instruments themselves. Article 7 of the Nuremberg Charter provided that the official position of defendants, whether as heads of State or as responsible officials, should not free them from responsibility, and article IV of the Genocide Convention says the same of constitutionally responsible rulers. The statutes of the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda repeated it, and the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone applied it to a sitting president on 31 May 2004, holding that Charles Taylor could not raise immunity before an international criminal court. Article 27 of the Rome Statute carries the same idea into the permanent court that now sits at the centre of international criminal law.
Rome Statute articles 27 and 98 on head of State immunity
Rome Statute article 27 removes the immunity and article 98 preserves an obligation that depends on it, and the whole modern dispute is about how to reconcile the two. Article 27(1) makes official capacity irrelevant to criminal responsibility before the Court. Article 27(2) goes further and provides that immunities attaching to the official capacity of a person, whether under national or international law, shall not bar the Court from exercising its jurisdiction.
Article 98(1) then tells the Court what it may not ask of a State. The Court may not proceed with a request for surrender that would require the requested State to act inconsistently with its obligations under international law with respect to the State or diplomatic immunity of a person of a third State, unless the Court first obtains that third State’s cooperation for a waiver.
The two provisions sit comfortably together when the accused is a national of a State that joined the Statute, because that State has accepted article 27 for its own officials and there is no immunity left for article 98 to protect. They collide when the accused is the serving head of a State that never joined. On one reading article 27(2) removed the immunity as between the Court and everyone, so article 98(1) has nothing to protect and a State Party must arrest. On the other reading a treaty cannot take away the rights of a country that never signed it, so the immunity of a non-party’s head of State survives, and article 98(1) exists precisely to stop the Court from putting a State Party in breach of it.
The Appeals Chamber took the first reading in the Al-Bashir appeal on 6 May 2019, when Jordan challenged a finding that it should have arrested the then President of Sudan during an Arab League summit. It held that head of State immunity does not exist under customary international law in relation to an international court, so article 98(1) was not engaged and Jordan had been obliged to act. The reasoning has been criticised since by governments and academic writers, on the ground that the Chamber inferred a rule of custom from very little State practice, and commentary through 2025 and 2026 has argued that the Court should revisit it.
There was a narrower route available and the Chamber did not rest on it. The Security Council had referred the situation in Darfur to the Court under article 13(b) in 2005, and a referral of that kind can be read as placing Sudan in the position of a State Party for the purposes of that situation, which would remove the immunity without any finding about custom at large. Several judges and commentators preferred that path, because it decides the case in front of the Court without deciding every future one.
States that refuse to arrest a head of State on an ICC warrant
States that decline to arrest face a finding and a referral, and nothing more coercive than that. Article 87(7) of the Statute allows the Court to make a finding of non-compliance where a State Party fails to comply with a request for cooperation. It may then refer the matter to the Assembly of States Parties, or to the Security Council where the Security Council referred the situation. The Assembly can take political measures on that referral, and it cannot compel an arrest, impose a penalty or enforce anything against the State concerned.
The Al-Bashir warrants produced a series of such findings against States that had received him, including South Africa and Jordan. Each finding turned on the same reasoning and each produced the same practical result, which was a record of non-compliance and a referral. Al-Bashir was eventually removed from office in Sudan in 2019 and has not been surrendered to the Court.
The warrants issued in 2023 against the President of Russia have produced the same pattern twice in two years. The Court found in October 2024 that Mongolia had failed to comply by receiving him without arresting him. Pre-Trial Chamber II made a further finding on 19 March 2026 in the Ukraine situation, holding that Tajikistan had failed to execute the request for arrest and surrender when it received him on 9 October 2025, and the Presidency referred that finding to the President of the Assembly of States Parties.
A State weighing the two obligations is weighing costs of very different sizes. Refusing the Court costs a finding and a referral to a political body. Arresting the serving head of a powerful neighbour carries consequences of a different order, and the surrender and extradition machinery that moves an accused between States gives the host government no cover, because the decision to execute the warrant is its own.
Head of State immunity against a civil claim in a foreign court
A civil claim against a serving head of State personally is barred by the same personal immunity that bars a prosecution, while a claim against his State is governed by a different and narrower rule. The distinction decides who the defendant should be. A suit naming the officeholder runs into an immunity that covers his private dealings as well as his public ones; a suit naming the State runs into State immunity, which no longer covers everything a State does.
State immunity has been restrictive for most of the last century, meaning that a State is immune for its governmental acts and not for its commercial ones. The United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property, adopted in 2004, codifies that position, and its article 3(2) provides expressly that the Convention is without prejudice to the privileges and immunities accorded under international law to heads of State ratione personae. The drafters kept the personal immunity outside the instrument rather than defining it.
That Convention is not yet in force. It requires thirty ratifications under article 30 and has twenty-five parties. Its provisions therefore bind a State only so far as they already state customary law or a national statute adopts them, and several of its rules on the limits of sovereign immunity are treated as doing the first of those.
National statutes preserve the personal immunity separately, which is why a claimant who sidesteps the State often meets the officeholder’s own immunity instead. Section 20 of the United Kingdom’s State Immunity Act 1978 applies the diplomatic immunity regime to a foreign sovereign or head of State. In the United States the immunity of a serving head of State is not decided by the court at all, but by the executive branch, which files a suggestion of immunity that the court then gives effect to.
Civil claims where State immunity has survived a torture allegation
State immunity has survived every attempt to read a torture exception into it, and the attempts have been made in three different courts within a decade. Claimants have argued that the prohibition of torture is a peremptory norm, so a rule of immunity inconsistent with it must give way. Each court has answered that the two rules operate on different planes, because immunity decides which forum may hear a claim rather than whether the conduct was lawful.
The International Court of Justice gave that answer in Jurisdictional Immunities of the State, decided on 3 February 2012. Italy argued that its courts could entertain damages claims by victims of serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by German forces during the Second World War. The Court held that customary international law contained no such exception, and that Italy had breached Germany’s immunity by allowing the claims to proceed and by taking measures against German State property.
The European Court of Human Rights had reached the same conclusion on a narrower margin eleven years earlier. In Al-Adsani v. United Kingdom, decided by the Grand Chamber on 21 November 2001, a dual British and Kuwaiti national who alleged he had been tortured in Kuwait complained that the English courts had struck out his damages claim on immunity grounds. The Grand Chamber held by nine votes to eight that international law did not generally accept the loss of immunity in a civil claim for torture committed abroad, so the striking out did not breach his right of access to a court. Eight judges dissented, on the ground that a peremptory norm should displace an ordinary rule of immunity.
The immunity also extends to the official rather than stopping at the State. The House of Lords held in Jones v. Ministry of Interior of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on 14 June 2006 that the immunity given by section 1(1) of the State Immunity Act 1978 extends to a State’s officials, servants and agents sued for acts done in that capacity, because a claim framed against the individual is in substance a claim against the State he served. A claimant who names the torturer rather than the government therefore meets the same bar.
Foreign heads of State sued or prosecuted in an Indian court
A foreign head of State cannot be sued in an Indian court without the written consent of the Central Government, because Section 86 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 answers the question before customary international law is reached. Section 86(1) provides that no foreign State may be sued in any court otherwise competent to try the suit except with the consent of the Central Government certified in writing by a Secretary to that Government. Section 86(4) extends the same protection to the Ruler of a foreign State and to ambassadors and envoys, and Section 87A defines a Ruler as the person recognised by the Central Government as the head of that State. Recognition is therefore an executive act, and a court takes the executive’s certificate as it finds it.
The consent is not a formality the Government grants at will in either direction. Section 86(2) allows consent to be given only in defined situations. They include a foreign State that has traded within India, one that holds immovable property here, and one that has itself instituted the suit, and the Central Government must give a person asking for consent a reasonable opportunity of being heard before it refuses.
Those defined situations have been read as a complete statutory answer rather than as a gloss on the customary rule. The Supreme Court held in Mirza Ali Akbar Kashani v. United Arab Republic, decided on 5 August 1965, that the section covers foreign States whatever their form of government, monarchical or republican, and that it occupies the field which the international law doctrine of immunity would otherwise govern. The plaintiff in that case had sued on a contract for the supply of goods and lost for want of consent.
On the criminal side India has taken on no obligation that would put a foreign head of State before an Indian court. India is not a party to the Rome Statute, so article 27 does not bind it and an ICC warrant creates no duty of arrest here; the Court could reach conduct connected with India only through a Security Council referral under article 13(b). India signed the 2004 Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities on 12 January 2007 and has not ratified it, so the statutory route through Section 86 remains the operative one. The Diplomatic Relations (Vienna Convention) Act, 1972 gives effect to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961 for diplomatic agents, which is a separate immunity resting on accreditation rather than on office.
Immunity claims that have run against India
Indian officeholders have been on the receiving end of the same doctrine abroad, and the clearest instance came in a United States court. In Sikhs for Justice v. Manmohan Singh, decided by the District Court for the District of Columbia on 19 August 2014, a civil claim was brought against the then recently retired Prime Minister of India over events in Punjab. While he held office the United States executive had filed a suggestion of head of State immunity on his behalf, and the court had given effect to it.
After he left office in May 2014 the court had to decide what survived. It held that he retained a residual immunity for official acts performed as Prime Minister, which is the functional immunity described above, and that the protection did not reach the separate period when he had served as Finance Minister between 1991 and 1996. The claims relating to the earlier tenure were allowed to proceed on that basis. The case is a working illustration of how the two immunities hand over to each other in practice.
India has also argued the functional side of the doctrine and lost. In the Enrica Lexie arbitration between Italy and India, the tribunal constituted under the Law of the Sea Convention issued its award on 21 May 2020, published with amendments on 10 August 2020. Two Italian marines on board a tanker had shot and killed two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast, and Italy claimed that they were State officials entitled to functional immunity from Indian criminal jurisdiction.
The tribunal upheld that claim by three votes to two, holding that the marines enjoyed immunity as State officials under customary international law, so India had to cease exercising its criminal jurisdiction over them. It held at the same time that Italy had breached the freedom of navigation provisions of the Convention and that India was entitled to compensation for the loss of life, the physical harm and the material damage. The same functional immunity that shields a former head of State for his official acts is what removed two foreign soldiers from an Indian criminal court.
Frequently asked questions
Does head of State immunity protect a president accused of genocide?
A serving president accused of genocide keeps his immunity in the criminal courts of every foreign State, because the personal immunity attaches to the office rather than to the charge. He does not keep it before an international criminal court, where article 27(2) of the Rome Statute and the decision of the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Taylor both say official capacity is no bar. Once he leaves office a foreign court may try him for private acts and for anything done before or after his term, and the International Law Commission’s draft article 7 lists genocide among the crimes for which functional immunity is not available.
Can a former head of State be arrested abroad?
A former head of State can be arrested abroad, because the personal immunity that prevented it ends with the office. What remains is functional immunity for official acts, and the House of Lords held in Pinochet (No. 3) on 24 March 1999 that torture is not an official function attracting that immunity, so the extradition proceedings could continue for conduct after 8 December 1988. Arrest still requires a national court with jurisdiction over the offence and a valid warrant or extradition request.
What is the difference between head of State immunity and diplomatic immunity?
Head of State immunity and diplomatic immunity come from different sources and end in different ways. Diplomatic immunity rests on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961, depends on accreditation to a receiving State, and can be withdrawn by declaring the agent persona non grata. Head of State immunity rests on customary international law, applies in every foreign State rather than in one, and ends when the officeholder leaves office. In India the two are carried by different instruments, the Diplomatic Relations (Vienna Convention) Act, 1972 and Section 86 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908.
Can a foreign head of State be sued in an Indian court?
A foreign head of State can be sued in an Indian court only with the consent of the Central Government, certified in writing by a Secretary under Section 86 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, which Section 86(4) extends from the foreign State to its Ruler. Consent may be given only in the situations Section 86(2) lists, such as a foreign State that has traded within India or holds immovable property here. The Supreme Court held in Mirza Ali Akbar Kashani v. United Arab Republic on 5 August 1965 that the section applies whatever the form of government of the foreign State.
Does an ICC arrest warrant against a serving head of State bind a State that is not a party?
An ICC arrest warrant creates no obligation for a State that never joined the Rome Statute, because the Statute binds its parties and a treaty does not impose duties on a country outside it. The dispute is about States that did join and are asked to arrest the head of a State that did not, where article 27(2) and article 98(1) point in opposite directions. The Court held in the Al-Bashir appeal of 6 May 2019 that no such immunity exists before it, and it has since found Mongolia and Tajikistan non-compliant for receiving a president without arresting him.
References
- Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Belgium), International Court of Justice, judgment 14 February 2002, paragraph 61 cited. https://www.icj-cij.org/case/121
- Certain Questions of Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters (Djibouti v. France), International Court of Justice, judgment 4 June 2008. https://www.icj-cij.org/case/136
- Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy: Greece intervening), International Court of Justice, judgment 3 February 2012. https://www.icj-cij.org/case/143
- R v. Bow Street Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, ex parte Pinochet Ugarte (No. 3), [2000] 1 AC 147, House of Lords, 24 March 1999. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199899/ldjudgmt/jd990324/pino1.htm
- Prosecutor v. Charles Ghankay Taylor, Decision on Immunity from Jurisdiction, SCSL-2003-01-I, Special Court for Sierra Leone, Appeals Chamber, 31 May 2004. http://www.rscsl.org/Taylor.html
- Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998, articles cited being 13, 27 and 98. https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf
- Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir, Judgment in the Jordan Referral re Al-Bashir Appeal, ICC-02/05-01/09 OA2, Appeals Chamber, 6 May 2019. https://www.icc-cpi.int/court-record/icc-02/05-01/09-397-corr
- Finding under article 87(7) of the Rome Statute on the non-compliance by Tajikistan with the request by the Court to cooperate in the arrest and surrender of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, ICC-01/22, Pre-Trial Chamber II, 19 March 2026. https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/CourtRecords/0902ebd180e05738.pdf
- Referral by the Presidency of the International Criminal Court of Tajikistan’s non-compliance to the Assembly of States Parties, International Criminal Court. https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/referral-presidency-international-criminal-court-tajikistans-non-compliance-assembly-states
- Immunity of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction, International Law Commission, draft articles adopted on second reading at the seventy-seventh session, 2026, draft articles 3, 4 and 7 cited. https://legal.un.org/ilc/status.shtml
- Daily Bulletin, seventy-seventh session, International Law Commission, recording the adoption of draft article 7 on 28 April 2026 and of the full set on 15 May 2026. https://legal.un.org/ilc/sessions/77/bulletin.shtml
- United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property, 2004, articles cited being 3 and 30, with the depositary status showing twenty-eight signatories and twenty-five parties and India’s signature of 12 January 2007. https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=III-13&chapter=3&clang=_en
- The Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (Act 5 of 1908), sections cited being 86 and 87A. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/2191/1/A1908-05.pdf
- Mirza Ali Akbar Kashani v. United Arab Republic and Another, Supreme Court of India, judgment 5 August 1965. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/104377/
- Sikhs for Justice v. Manmohan Singh, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, 19 August 2014. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/dc-district-court-fails-recognize-official-acts-immunity-former-indian-prime-minister
- The “Enrica Lexie” Incident (Italy v. India), PCA Case No. 2015-28, award of 21 May 2020, published with amendments on 10 August 2020. https://pca-cpa.org/en/cases/117/
- The Diplomatic Relations (Vienna Convention) Act, 1972 (Act 43 of 1972), giving effect in India to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961.
This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified advocate before acting on any point discussed here.