An accredited diplomat sent by a state on a mission to a foreign country, or who is its highest-ranking permanent diplomat residing in a foreign country, officially representing his or her state in relations with foreign governments. Ambassadors are to be distinguished from consuls, whose chief functions are to protect citizens abroad, and to protect the commercial interests of these citizens.
An ambassador, rarely embassador, is a diplomatic official accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization, to serve as the official representative of his or her own country.
Diplomats
Role
The senior diplomatic officers among members of the Commonwealth of Nations are known as High Commissioners, who are the heads of High Commissions. The Congress of Vienna of 1815 formalized the system of diplomatic rank under international law:
Ambassadors are ministers of the highest rank, with plenipotentiary authority to represent their head of state. Thus a resident ambassador to a country might at the same time also be a non-resident ambassador to one or more other countries.
Among European powers, the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary (French ambassadeur extraordinaire et plénipotentiaire or German ausserordentlicher und bevollmächtigter Botschafter) was deemed the personal representative of the Sovereign, and the custom of dispatching ambassadors to the head of state rather than the government has persisted.
Because members of the Commonwealth of Nations have or had a common head of state, they do not exchange ambassadors, but instead have High Commissioners which represent the governments rather than the head of state.
Ranking below full ambassador are the rank of Envoy, Minister resident and Chargé d'affaires.
While the title still reflects the Ambassador's natural vocation to head a diplomatic mission, the rank is often held by career diplomats, as a matter of internal promotion, regardless of the posting, and in many national careers it is quite common for them to be appointed to other functions, especially within the ministry/ministries in charge of foreign affairs, in some countries in systematical alteration with actual postings.
Extraordinary postings
Not unlike many diplomats of the lower rank of Resident (Minister) or the usually full rank of high commissioner, or in other circumstances a Consul representative, an ambassador can in specific historical conditions be entrusted with a task that is no less administrative then diplomatic, such as representing the protector in a protectorate of the subordinate kind, e.g. posted by France in the Saar (rather a mandate territory by another name, in part of Germany)
Lists of ambassadors
List of Ambassadors from Serbia List of High Commissioners and Ambassadors from Australia List of Ambassadors from Egypt List of Ambassadors from Finland List of Israeli Ambassadors and List of Israeli ambassadors to the United States Ambassadors from the United States Ambassadors to the United States List of Ambassadors and High Commissioners to Canada List of Ambassadors and High Commissioners to the United KingdomNon-diplomatic ambassadorships
In a less formal sense, the word is used for high-profile non-diplomatic representative of various entities (rarely states), mainly cultural and charitable organisations, often as willing figure heads to attract media attention, e.g.
Even more loosely, the word ambassador is sometimes used, without being an actual title, as a vague description of anyone who acts as a high-profile spokesman, frontman etcetera, even implicietly by excelling in a field (such as an art) which he is the said to be an 'ambassador' of, even if no organised campaign is involved.
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