(Question applies mainly to US and Canadian government but perspectives from all countries are welcome)
So say you decide to travel to a country that your government has explicitly stated in its travel advisory is completely unsafe to visit and warns you strongly to avoid altogether. And then you get into a bit of trouble abroad (arrested/detained for no reason, kidnapped, fall ill, etc). And your government pretty much says “nah we’re not gonna bother, you knew better ” and makes no effort whatsoever to rescue you from your predicament because they feel you accepted the inherent risk in traveling to such a dangerous area. End result, you die or never come home. Your family is pissed off at the gov’s inaction and sues them. What is the likelihood that they would win such a lawsuit? Would it be acceptable for the government to state they are not responsible for any trouble that arises as a result of its citizen traveling to a country that is known for being too dangerous for tourists or would such a disclaimer be legally problematic in its own right?
In general, the American embassies overseas are not responsible for your well being. If you violate local laws, you go to local jails and hire a local lawyer. A consular officer may visit you for a welfare check, but you’re on your own.
As Chefguy said, American embassies are generally not responsible for a citizen’s well-being.
With respect to the OP’s question about the success of suing the government, the answer is: unlikely. Generally, the US government is immune from lawsuits due to sovereign immunity – that is, you can’t sue to government unless the government explicitly allows you to do so. One example of such a limited waiver of government’s sovereign immunity is the Federal Torts Claim Act, which allows private citizens to sue the federal government for certain types of alleged torts. However, because the government generally does not have a duty to ensure a citizen’s well-being in a foreign country, you are unlikely to successfully argue that the government was negligent when it did not act to prevent your injury or death.
Absolutely zero chance of the lawsuit going anywhere, and it would probably be summarily dismissed. Your family would be better off spending the money on something productive instead of paying a shyster to file a frivolous, groundless lawsuit. The US government has zero obligation to protect an individual citizen from anything, and generally has zero legal authority to do anything in ‘strongly unsafe’ areas. The police in the US don’t have any duty to protect you from a crime being committed in the state even if there’s a court order for them to arrest the person who violates it, and there’s even less of a theory to obligate the feds to do anything, and even less grounds to mandate action outside of the US. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html
All that the US government does for citizens overseas who get into trouble is help them find lawyers and translators, get messages back to their family, or get a plane ticket back to the Us in some circumstances. You really can’t sue the government for not committing an act of war to save you from some trouble you got into in foreign lands, even if they didn’t tell you up front that it was a dangerous area. Not only ‘would’ it be acceptable, they make it pretty damn clear in travel warnings:
Did not know sovereign immunity was a thing. I just assumed since citizens could sue their local governments, suing the federal government was generally possible.
Well I certainly don’t believe that there is a general expectation that your government should be willing to resort acts of war just to rescue a citizen in a foreign country, but I was thinking about the extent that the US government has gone to to try and save citizens who were detained in North Korea. It seems to me they’ll do anything short of breaking international law/laws local to the country or paying a ransom. I was wondering if all that effort was due to any kind of legal obligation to protect citizens abroad within reasonable means. I honestly wasn’t sure if they were within their right to simply tell you “fuck off and die” if you or your family petitions for their assistance. I just assumed at least the bare minimum was required of them.
Off-topic, but if police are under no legal obligation to protect citizens from criminals, then how exactly do they “serve and protect”?
The legal and factual answer is that “To protect and to serve” is just a motto of some police departments, and thus hold little to no legal significance. In that sense, they are not much different than statements from the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” or that all men have “unalienable rights” such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – that is, these are just aspirational statements, rather than legally binding declarations.
They are completely within their rights to tell you that there’s nothing they can do if you go and get yourself arrested in North Korea. And they’re under no obligation to try to negotiate with anyone. The idea that an individual can petition the government to adopt a particular foreign policy stance is just wildly unrealistic. They’ll almost always send a protest letter, though, so you’ll get that much above the bare minimum.
That’s a motto and has no legal force, so doesn’t really enter into legality. The general idea is that even if they have a duty to protect people as a whole, or the area as a whole, or the country as a whole, or ‘the peace’, they don’t have any duty to protect a particular individual.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that U.S. embassies are less helpful for their citizens abroad than are the embassies of other developed countries for their citizens. Any substance to such claims?
If your passport is stolen, they are there to assist you. If your money and cards have been stolen, they may be able to help you out with a plane ticket or help you contact someone in the states to wire you money. Embassies don’t have a slush fund for this, but often someone who has been helped will donate money for an emergency fund to the embassy that helped him out . They will ask you to pay it pack after arriving home, but the reality is that few people do so. Embassies and consulates are in the host country at the pleasure of the host government. There are agreements in place that govern their existence, and not all people at an embassy have diplomatic immunity. If you are a lowly staffer and commit a crime, you’re in a world of shit, just like anyone else.
In the last significant war in Lebanon, Americans were better off going to the French to be evacuated than the Americans. I know in my 12 years overseas the US Embassy was mostly useless.
In Canberra one day (1996?) they would not even allow me to enter the Embassy at all. I happened to be walking by, it was blazing hot and I wanted to get some water and see about adding pages to my passport. Nope… make an appointment for 3 weeks from now.
Questions like this quite often come up in the UK, though less as a matter of law than of political pressure to fulfil a (supposed) moral obligation (we don’t, on the whole, resort to law as the first option for getting a government to do something).
Every year, there are people who seem to think it’s the British Embassy’s responsibility to get them out of trouble one way or another, and every year some hapless consular official has to explain, in words of as few syllables as possible, that they can be put into contact with a local lawyer and consular staff will visit them in jail and maintain contact with home (but local laws and legal processes can’t just be overturned by a wave of a passport); or they’ll be helped to deal with the local medical system; or if everything they had has been stolen, they can be helped with documents and money to get home. But all of that will ultimately have to be paid back by them, or their insurance company (which is why you should always take out travel insurance).
Back in the early 90s I was dating a girl from The Gambia. I went to visit her there and her cousin took offense to an American dating her (They were originally from Lebanon). After some very believable threats of bodily harm I hurried over to the American Embassy around 10pm. The staff was gone and it was being guarded by local security. They let me in the Embassy where I spent thethe r night on a couch.
In the morning I met with the Ambassador, he personally called the family and told them that if any harm came to me, they would never get a visa to the US again. Her family has a business importing things from the United States, so the ability to travel to the US was vital to them.
Thankfully the phone call was effective and I had a pleasant time for the remainder of my visit.
I used to work for an Irish politician. We would occasionally get phone calls from constituents with family members who were in some kind of difficulty abroad. It was the consular staff based in Dublin who we would contact, and they were unfailingly polite and obliging - which is certainly not something I would say about civil servants in all the other government departments.
One time we took a call from a woman whose (adult) son was stuck in a Spanish airport, having arrived there to discover his passport was missing. We got on to the Department, they took the info and relayed it to their colleagues in Spain, sorted the matter out and got the man home as quickly as possible.
Our consular contact later told us that the man had lost his passport because he was stinking drunk and had been verbally abusive to everyone in the airport. So I guess (to kind of answer the thread title question) they felt at least liable enough that they couldn’t do what they’d probably like to do, and just leave him there.
There was actually a FOTW documentary about the work of a British Consulate. It was in a friendly country, but many of the people who came in looking for help were shocked at how little they could do. As Patrick says above, if you have lost all your money and passport, all they will do is direct you to the police for the theft, issue you with a temporary (single use) passport for a fee and lend you a small amount of money to keep you going. Back in the UK, you will have to repay any loan as well as pay £70 for a replacement passport.
In general, consulates and embassies are not there to help unfortunate citizens abroad; they are there to promote trade and diplomatic relations.
In a more curious twist, for a time, some years ago now, it became a thing where rich persons from largely Mid East countries would apply for and acquire Canadian citizenship only to return to places like Tehran and carry on with their lives. Secure in the knowledge if things took a turn the Canadian government would spend big dollars getting them out as they were Canadian citizens. Keep in mind, they didn’t commit crimes, just caught up in unfortunate events and now requiring evacuation.
Once this ruse was identified the rules and regs were altered to end this practice. So, as a criminal, your embassy not so responsible to work on your behalf. But, as a citizen caught during unrest or upheaval, a very different sort of obligations apply.
One thing that can be done to get some action taken is for a relative in the US to contact their senator. The senator can contact the embassy and request them to find out what is going on. An embassy is required to respond to a senator’s request within 24 hours, IIRC. That doesn’t mean they have to make demands on the local government, but they have to try to find out where the person is and perhaps make a welfare check.
You can sue anybody, for anything. Winning is another matter.
Sovereign Immunity applies to state & local governments, too. With some limitations, and often more kinds of torts allowed.
But try suing your local city because a pothole in a city street damaged your vehicle. Such a lawsuit will likely be thrown out by the first judge to see it (if you can even find a lawyer willing to file it).
You can actually sue a country, win, and still not be able to collect anything because the other country refuses to recognize the judgement. Cubans have sued the United States and vice-versa over stuff that happened during the 60’s and won in their respective countries courts but it still doesn’t mean anything even if relations were to normalize.
I was once in Ottawa, Canada, for the annual tulip festival. Basically, anybody, any business, any place that can grow them does, and the city is full of colorful tulips.
The US Embassy participated in the festival also, and its gardens were full of beautiful tulips–which, sadly, were only visible behind the tall chain-link fences that protected the Embassy.