This is something for my fellow international public law nerds.

Q: When does the Vienna Convention of Consular Relations make front-page headlines?

A: When there is a petty argument between Bolivia and Chile about the flag in front of the Bolivian Consulate in Antofagasta.

Thanks to this, the whole country is now talking about Art. 29 of the 1963 Vienna Convention. I expect protests in front of the Chilean Embassy in Bolivia tomorrow, as well as the inclusion of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations in the high school curriculum.

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales made a big temporal leap, twittering “from invasion (1879) to humiliation (2017)”, referring to the War of the Pacific, which is the underlying reason for all this tension.

(Hier geht es zur deutschen Fassung.)