К вопросу о понятии "беженец" в международном праве

Abstract

The article explores the process of trie formation of the definition of "the refugee" in iternational law. The institution of refugees originated as an internal institution of granting asylum to the people who were persecuted by the authorities of the countries of which for political reasons they were residents. The international legal protection of refugees was first legally codified within the framework of the League of Nations as the answer to the massive forced displacement of people in the wake of World War I, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the establishment of the Bolshevik power in Russia and the fascist regime in Germany and the beginning of its aggressive annexationist policy. That is why the Agreements of 1926, 1928, 1933 and 1938 which contain the definitions of "the refugee" were bound to certain events and regions. The concluding stage in constituting the international mechanism for securing the rights of refugees has become the activity of the UN in therarea. The authors see the reasons determining this situation in the following two factors: - the objective one - the necessity of the help of the international community to repatriate a multitude of regugees and DPs after World War H; - the subjective - the responsibility of the UN organs (the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council) as ensnrined in the Charter for the promotion of human rights. As the result of the UN activity the convention of 1951 on the refugee status was adopted and special organs were set up: the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its Execitivc Committee, bound according to the Charter of 1950 to provide international protection and to render assistance in seeking the solutions of the problems of the refugees. The definitions of refugees as formulated in the Convention of 1951 and the Charter of UNHCR have embodied the notions of the preceding agreements recognizing as such only the category of political refugees persecuted for their race, religious beliefs, citizenship, belonging to a certain social group or political persuasions. Similar to the Agreements of the League of Nations these definitions contained geographical and regional constraints. With the Protocol of 1967 adopted, the conventional definition of "the refugee" has acquired the universal character. The article emphasizes that the developments of the 50 s- 70s connected with local armed conflicts, contradictions between nations, national liberation movement which enveloped the African and Asian Continents and, following the collapse of the USSR and the Jugoslavian Federation, also a member of post- Soviet regions, brought about a massive stream of refugees who are not covered by the definition of 1951. The UN failed to adopt resolutions concerning broader interpretation of the notion of'the refugee' because of the opposition of several European countries (Great Britain, Switzerland), the USA and Australia which sought to protect themselves from the influx of new refugees. The UN organs: the Genera! Assembly and the ECOSOC merely confirmed post factum the extention of the UNHCR mandate to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees. The radical changes of the notion of "the refugee" which take into account the causes (armed conflicts between nations) were reflected in the OAE Convention of 1969, the Cartagena Declaration of 1984 and the CIS Agreement of 1993 with the latter introducing a new category of refugeestorced migrants (the citizens of the receiving state) into international legal usage. The European regional organizations (the Council of Europe and the European Union) directed their efforts at developing a single policy of the European States concerning non-refoulement of those categories of the refugees which are not covered by the definition of the Convention of 1951. Following the analysis of the current state of the problem the article comes to the conclusion that to raise the effectiveness of the mechanism of securing refugees' rights it is necessary to introduce changes in the definition of "the refugee" according to the Convention of 1951, taking into consideration the supplements, accepted in regional conventions through the adoption of the Supplementary Protocol which would include the article of the responsibility of the states whose