What happens if you’re travelling overseas in a country in which your country doesn’t have an embassy? Where do you go if you get in trouble or lose your passport?
This must happen pretty regularly – I imagine poorer countries can’t afford to maintain embassies in every single country in the world (though I may well be wrong). So suppose you’re the odd Cambodian traveling in, say, Bolivia – or vice versa – and you lose your passport. What are you supposed to do?
Countries frequently hire the embassies of another country to do the embassy functions for them. The Swiss are a common one for this. So, in such a country, you would go to the Swiss embassy to replace your (non-Swiss) passport, etc.
But I believe the charges for this are fairly high. I don’t know that a poorer country would be able to afford to do this in every country.
I can’t speak for this case (I would assume you’d be SOL). But I have first hand experience of the case where a coutry does not have a embassy because international disputes. My brother-in-law is Serbian, during (and after) the Kosovo crisis Britain and Yugoslavia had cut off diplomatic relations. The Yugoslavian “embassy” in London (where we got our visas for my sister’s wedding) was a “special intrest section” in another county’s embassy (Cyprus in this case). I don’t know if there is a similar situation for US/UK in Iran, Cuba, N. Korea, etc.
You don’t have to be a poor country to be in this position - rich-but-small is enough. Here’s Ireland’s official advice:
http://foreignaffairs.gov.ie/services/traveladvice/04.asp
The ‘nearest’ embassy or consulate is in many cases in a neighbouring country (e.g. that for Albania is in Greece, and for Bahrain is in Saudi Arabia), and takes responsibility for diplomatic relations with both countries.
In the case mentionned in the OP, one of the following would generally apply :
-Your country is represented by a mission which isn’t officially an “embassy” (because diplomatic relations have been suspended for instance) but still act as such. I believe that Israel has such missions in many arab countries it has no official diplomatic relationships with, for instance.
-Your country is represented by another one (like in the Swiss example given in a previous post).
-Your country, despite not having an embassy, has at least an “honorary consul” (who can be a a fellow citizen living there or often a local citizen with well-established ties or interests with your nation, and often unpaid) who can take care of the most ordinary issues.
-The embassy of your country is actually situated in a neighboring country (it even happens for the largest countries. I doubt for instance that the USA has an embassy in each of the small independant islands of the Pacific ).
I assume that in some rare cases, none of the above would apply. At the beginning of the war in Irak, I believe that only a handful of foreign countries have kept a diplomatic representation in Baghdad, for instance.
As mentionned above, in the case of the EU, any EU citizen can walk in the embassy of any other EU country, if need be, at least for serious issues (I doubt the Slovenian embassy in Congo, assuming there’s one, will be very interested if I lost my passport in Brazzzaville) . By the way, when the issue isn’t simply a stolen passport but say a raging civil war, a western country will often take care of the evacuation of all westerners, regardless of their citizenship. It happens on a regular basis in Africa, and the country in charge is generally the UK, France, or the USA, whoever has the most significant presence in the area).
You aren’t wrong. Very few countries have an embassy in most foreign countries, actually.
Canada and Australia tend to watch each other’s backs in this regard. There are formalised agreements in place between the two countries regarding looking after one another’s nationals in out of the way places. As far as I know you get quite a comprehensive range of consular services from the other country’s embassy, not only in dire emergencies.
My boyfriend’s Canadian passport officially instructs him to consult the British embassy if there’s no Canadian one. No mention of Australia.
I suppose in general, you’d want to pick the embassy of the closest ally you can find…
Also there are businessmen who act as a defacto consular official in smaller countries. They have some sort of governmental blessing and limited powers to support their countrymen. I see these offices all the time in china like maybe the Columbian charge d’affairs is just a columbian businessman in China who is willing to offer some limited services to his government for free.
Even a big rich country does not maintain consulates in every country. In Barbados, there is a building that has a sign on it that says something like, “US Caribbean Consulate”, from which I infer that it is the consulate for some significant portion of the Caribbean.
I knew a woman who was the “Honorary Austrian Consul” in Montreal. She was not even an Austrian citizen, although she was born there. She had escaped to Venezuela before WWII and eventually found her way to Montreal, where she married one of my colleagues. After divorcing, she needed a job and that was the one she found.
That’s odd. Maybe it’s changed in the last ten years (my passport has just recently expired). When I got it, the accompanying information didn’t give a general “just rock up to the Canadian Embassy if there isn’t an Australian one”. Rather, it talked about a reciprocal agreement, and gave a specific list of countries where the Canadian embassy would assist ex-pat Australians. It was some sort of mutual cost-cutting programme. Maybe it’s no longer current.
That’s always been my understanding too. I’ve also thought there was something similar with New Zealand.
Maybe it’s not reciprocal. Canada could have agreed to help Australian citizens, while it itself hasn’t chosen to “cut costs” and maintains more embassies and consulates and/or has an agreement with the UK (as mentionned by a Canadian poster).
I checked the official sites of both countries, and it seems that indeed the Australian authorities often advise Australian citizens to contact the Canadian embassy.
On the other hand, Canada advise its citizens to contact Canadian embassies in neighboring countries, and in some rare cases the british embassy (I wondered why they do so only in some countries. Generally, they just give the adress, phone number, etc… of the neareast Canadian representation, but sometimes they also add the address of the British embassy).
At first glance, Canada seems to have significantly more representations in foreign countries than Australia.
By the way, here’s the web page listing the Australian missions in foreign countries. I thought it was interesting re. the OP because, depending of the country it lists various different situations. In some countries, Australia has an embassy, in others, only a consulate, or a “high commission”, sometimes an honorary consul, and as mentionned above, in some countries the reference of the Canadian representation is listed.
As a Canadian, I would look in order for, Canadian, British, US then Australian consulates. Commenwealth and Allied countries make the most sense to look for if you are in trouble away from home. Not to mention, these countries are most likely to employe people who speak english.
While I was at it, I checked a random small African country (Ghana). Ghana has about 15-20 embassies or consulates in foreign countries, mostly African and important and/or affluent countries, with some seemingly random (but probably not) exceptions, like the Czech Republic or Denmark, plus about a dozen other representations.
Even less foreign countries seem to have a representation in Ghana, though I couldn’t find a list (actually, I found many lists, but they all appear very incomplete).
If Ghana (and some other small countries I quickly looked at) is in any way representative (but it might not be), there are maybe a dozen countries maintaining an extended network of consulates(). I remember having been taught there are even fewer than that with an extended network of embassies ().
(*) Embassies are diplomatic missions in the country. Consulates are there mainly to provide assistance, documents, etc… to expatriates and travellers.
A “high commission” is an embassy. Embassies of British Commonwealth countries in other British Commonwealth countries are called high commissions. For instance, you’ll find a British High Commision in Ottawa.