Legal Nature of Diplomatic Protection in Light of the Progressive Development of International Law: Right of the States or Right of the Human Beings?

The objective of this paper is the study of the legal nature of diplomatic protection with the aim of elucidating if, in fact, it is a States' right strictu sensu, an individuals' right, or both because of an underlying complementarity between States and individuals' rights. For that purpose, firstly, a general overview of the institution will be studied; secondly, the right of States to exercise diplomatic protection will be analysed; thirdly, the exercise of diplomatic protection as a duty of the States will be explored; and finally, the conditions of exercise of diplomatic protection will be overviewed. It is concluded that the real challenge of diplomatic protection is not the substitution of States by individuals in the ownership of the main right but to recognize that two complementary rights coexist within the institution: the subjective and substantive right of individuals and the correlative subjective and substantive right of States.