Definition and Modern Particularities of the International Legal Status of Forced Migrants

Purpose: The paper examines issues the definition and the international legal backgrounds of the forced migrants’ status regulation in the context of the approval of Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration. The principles established by current legal instruments to protect refugees and asylum-seekers, humanitarian law and human rights provisions are essential to form an international legal mechanism of the forced migration regulation. Design/Methodology/Approach: For the purpose of defining the forced migrants’ legal status, it seems necessary: first, to look through the contents of such international treaties as International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966, Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951, the IV Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 1949 and the relevant international legal documents of UNHCR; second, to formulate the basic rights and guarantees applicable to forced migrants; third, to identify the particular international legal approaches to both situations of a mass influx of migrants from the states where armed conflicts take place and the conditions of hostilities where forced migrants are considered as the protected persons under the IHL rules. Findings: The author forms a set of basic rights and guarantees, which may supplement the UN Global Compact on Migration and the IV Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 1949. The legal recommendations proposed here could be implement by the international community in the above situations of forced migration. Practical implications: The results are designed to improve the international legal standards of reception and resettlement of forced migrants in specific situations. Originality/Value: The main contribution of the study is the formulating the author’s position on definition and particularities of the international legal status of forced migrants, general and special principles of the involuntary migration legal regulation and some results of the scholarly discussion which takes place in the field.