Diplomacy is the practice of structured communication between governments to safeguard interests and promote political, economic, cultural and scientific exchanges.
This often involves negotiating with other nations — for example, a foreign minister or ambassador would negotiate a trade agreement with another country’s government or another nation’s representative at the UN. It may also involve large international conferences, attended by dozens of heads-of-state and other national leaders, to discuss a broad range of global issues, such as migration, borders or trade. The United Nations Conference on Environmental Development, for instance, brought together a hundred of these heads-of-state and thousands of professional diplomats to negotiate an agreement to limit carbon emissions.
Diplomacy has probably existed as long as civilization itself. Records of envoys travelling between civilisations date back at least 2500 years.
Its most important function today is to help channel the rapid changes in the world into a non-violent and peaceful form of governance at both the local and global level. To achieve this, it must reinvigorate in full scope its traditional search for compromise solutions.
For this reason, effective diplomatic communication is critical. This includes attentive listening (empathy), clear language and avoiding offence. It also means building relationships between different sites of power and influence, such as huge corporations, religious organisations and NGOs. These institutions are not formally part of the state, but they often need to be treated diplomatically because of their enormous authority over citizens. Diplomacy also aims to establish rules that guarantee the safety and security of envoys and allow them to work freely. For example, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations stipulates that embassy staff and diplomats will be protected when they are in another country.
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