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With reference to your country .Discuss the important functions of diplomatic missions

By definition diplomatic mission is a group of people from one state or an international inter-governmental organisation (such as the United Nations) present in another state to represent the sending state/organisation officially in the receiving state. In practice, a diplomatic mission usually denotes the resident mission, namely the office of a country's diplomatic representatives in the capital city of another country. As well as being a diplomatic mission to the country in which it is situated, it may also be a non-resident permanent mission to one or more other countries. There are thus resident and non-resident embassies. A permanent diplomatic mission is typically known as an Embassy, and the head of the mission is known as an Ambassador, or High Commissioner. The term "embassy" is commonly used also as a section of a building in which the work of the diplomatic mission is carried out, but, strictly speaking, it is the diplomatic delegation itself that is the embassy, while the office space and the diplomatic work done is called the Chancery. Therefore, the Embassy operates in the Chancery.

The members of a diplomatic mission can reside within or outside the building that holds the mission's chancery, and their private residences enjoy the same rights as the premises of the mission as regards inviolability and protection

The staffs of diplomatic missions consist of diplomatic personnel (attachés, secretaries, and councillors), technical and administrative personnel who do not always have official designations (office workers, secretaries-advisers, translators, teletypists, stenographers, technical secretaries, and book-keepers, who do not have diplomatic passport or rank), and service personnel (chauffeurs, maids, guards, and cooks), who may be citizens of the country in which the mission is located or of the accrediting state

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The major function of diplomatic mission is Representation: It is the function which permanent missions performed more visibly since their establishment as organs of external relations of States. The representation function means that diplomatic agents participate to events in public life, standing for the sending State, i.e. the approval attitude which it assumes with respect to significant moments in the public life of the country of residence. The diplomatic mission doesn’t represent the chief of State nor the Government, but the sending State as subject of international law. This is why it is necessary to make a clear distinction between the function of representation of a diplomatic mission and the juridical act of representation in international law. International representation of States is a juridical rapport on whose ground a State grants another State the right to fulfill juridical actions towards a third State. Subsequently, in the case of international representation we can identify three subjects of international law. It is not the case of diplomatic mission, which is not a subject of international law, but an organ that helps maintaining and developing relations between two States as subjects of the diplomatic rapport.

 .The second function of a diplomatic mission is  promoting friendly relations between the sending State and the receiving State, and developing their economic, cultural and scientific relations for example Zimbabwe and China negotiating for mining equipment's to improve economic growth  hence helping in increasing the national gross domestic product.

  The functions of diplomatic missions, have changed surprisingly little during the last 400 years. By Satow: The functions of a diplomatic mission is to represent the sending state, to protect its interests and those of its nationals, to negotiate with the government to which it is accredited, to report to the sending government on all the matters of importance to it, and to promote friendly relations inn general between the two countries. It must also endeavour to develop, in accordance with the instructions it receives, co-operation useful to its government in matters of commerce, finance, economics, labour, scientific research and defence.

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The other function of a diplomatic mission is Representing the sending State. Implementation of this function serves the purpose of creating friendly environment for development of foreign relations. It is ‘representation of a state’.Statements made by the diplomats are regarded as the statements made by the sending State .The head of mission and the mission itself are not only the representation of the sending government, or the head of state, but of the sending state as a whole, as the subject of international law . Done through the  acts of diplomacy: demarches . Protecting in the receiving State the interests of the sending State and of its nationals, within the limits permitted by international law.

Diplomatic protection is also function diplomatic missions. In order to use means for diplomatic protection in order to ensure that the person is treated in accordance with binding law, certain conditions have to be met: Citizenship of the sending state – Issue of dual citizenship and the factual bound: Nottebohm case – Exhautions of legal means of appeal before the organs/courts of the receiving state.

The other function of diplomatic mission is to negotiating with the Government of the receiving State; Article 7 of the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties Article 7. FULL POWERS  A person is considered as representing a State for the purpose of adopting or authenticating the text of a treaty or for the purpose of expressing the consent of the State to be bound by a treaty if: (a) He produces appropriate full powers; or (b) It appears from the practice of the States concerned or from other circumstances that their intention was to consider that person as representing the State for such purposes and to dispense with full powers. 2. In virtue of their functions and without having to produce full powers, the following are considered as representing their State: (a) Heads of State, Heads of Government and Ministers for Foreign Affairs, for  the purpose of performing all acts relating to the conclusion of a treaty; (6) Heads of diplomatic missions, for the purpose of adopting the text of a treaty  between the accrediting State and the State to which they are accredited;  (c) Representatives accredited by States to an international conference or to an international organization or one of its organs, for the purpose of adopting the text of a treaty in that conference, organization or organ.