An embassy is symbolic because it is a representation of a country on another country’s soil. The land upon which the embassy sits is sacrosanct; it is so entrenched within the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that there is very little room to dispute the sanctity of an embassy’s premises.

When a country decides to close its embassy (for generic purposes, let’s just use the word ‘mission’), it normally does so with a heavy heart. In this article, let’s look at the reasons why an embassy would have to be closed. A subsequent article will touch upon the implications and ramifications of closing a mission.

Of course, in this scenario we will put aside for the time being the breaking-off of diplomatic relations which would trigger the closure of an embassy.

Top of the list of reasons why a country would close its representative office is because of funding. More specifically – the lack thereof.

It costs a lot to maintain an office abroad: salaries for the local staff, rental of premises and housing, placement of officers and their families abroad. In short, a whole host of bills that would need ot be paid on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis. And if the returns are not good enough (i.e. there is not sufficient trade or investment flows) then the management might decide that it is not financially feasible to keep a mission open.

A second reason would be because that it is no longer strategic to have a mission in the host country.

Geopolitics is such that it shifts constantly – in the 1990s it was necessary for Malaysia to have an office in Conakry, Guinea because of investments and such. By 2010, the need was less since the advent of technology and dwindling investment projects made it less attractive to have a physical presence in Guinea.

A third reason might be because of security concerns. If it is no longer safe for a diplomatic office to operate in a particular country, and if there are no substantial investments etc with that host country, then a country might decide that it would relocate to another more profitable (and safer) country. This relocation is different from temporarily closing a mission, such was the case for many embassies when Baghdad fell in 2002. When you temporarily close a mission, you would normally keep the premises (continue to pay rent) and keep the guards on your payroll. There is a feeling of just leaving for a while with every intention of coming back. If you relocate to another country, there is no intention of coming back.

Incidentally, a mission might simply be relocated because the capital city of the host country has also moved. In this case, the embassy has not closed, it has simply moved to the new administrative capital. This was true in the case of Kazakhstan, when the government moved its capital city from Almaty to Astana, in the north of the country.