Candidate of Law Sciences, docent of the Department of International Law of the PFUR Kiseleva E.V. held an open lecture

On March 3, 2021, within the framework of the VII International Scientific and Practical School on International Law on the topic "Actual problems of theory, practice and teaching of international law" held in online format  from March 1 to 10, 2021, a lecture was held on the topic: "Migration and Human Rights: tendencies of the development of sources of international law" Kiseleva Ekaterina Vyacheslavovna, candidate of law sciences, docent of the Department of International Law, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (Moscow, Russia).

                 

Speaking about the migration of human rights, the lecturer noted that the pandemic has made adjustments to the migration situation that has developed in Moscow, when the volume of external migrants staying with us and performing invisible roles in society turned out to be significantly changed, when the huge sectors in which they were employed found themselves frozen and they were left without means of subsistence when they could not leave for their homeland, because the borders were closed. The interrelation of migration and human rights themes reveals new trends in the development of sources of international law in general.

                 

It is a well-known fact that the legal basis for the international protection of human rights is presented in the international Bill of Human Rights, which includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, two covenants on economic, social and cultural rights, civil, political rights and two optional protocols. The Declaration of Rights, a document of the General Assembly, began to be considered as containing legal norms precisely with the passage of time, when those legal provisions that were included in its text had already acquired the character of an international custom. Initially, in form, it was a declaration, that is, what is now called soft law. Then, on its basis, two treaties, two international pacts were formulated. A similar two-tier pattern can be seen in other parts of international human rights law. For example, documents on racial discrimination have gone the same way in wording, on people with disabilities, and so on.

A similar model of lawmaking is observed in other areas of public international law. For example, in space law, at the beginning there was a declaration, and then agreements on outer space, a treaty on outer space, and so on. The human rights side of international cooperation once again illustrates this approach to the formulation of rights and obligations: at the beginning, agreement, at the political level, then making it binding in the form of a treaty. At present, the protection of human rights, of course, can also be viewed as a system that includes not only international treaties, but also bodies created to monitor compliance by states with the conditions that they have accepted. This refers to the human rights treaty bodies, the human rights charter. They also represent a certain model for the interpretation of general comments existing in international treaties, which are given by treaty bodies and a model for the development of the content of the relevant norms of international law, and, in addition, from the point of view of the law of international treaties, they can be considered as bodies for monitoring the observance of international treaties, the fact that the 1969 Vienna Convention was not included, but the law of international treaties, as an industry that goes beyond the 1969 Vienna Convention, is certainly present.

Another aspect that could be the first with regard to the protection of human rights is that respect for the protection of human rights must certainly be regarded as a fundamental principle of public international law. Traditionally, the principles are divided into two parts, 7 of them we derived from the UN Charter, 3 others, including the protection of human rights, were derived from the 1975 CSCE Final Act, then over the past two decades, it can already be considered an established point of view that the UN Charter should be read slightly differently than before. The principle of the protection of human rights should be derived directly from the Charter, since part 3 of Article 1 of the Charter, for example, states that the purpose of the organization is, inter alia, to carry out international cooperation and so on, to promote and develop respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction of race, gender, language and religion, and Article 55 says, with regard to international economic and social cooperation, that the UN promotes universal respect and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction of race, gender, language and religion. All other sources created in cooperation of the state must comply, among other things, with this principle of protecting human rights. This means that the protection of human rights can be considered not only in a separate area of human rights protection, but should not be violated by agreements that states reach in other areas: trade law, international fight against crime, and so on.

                 

During the lecture, the lecturer was asked questions. One of them dealt with the use of the word migrant and whether this word could be used as an umbrella term for refugee. Answering this question, the lecturer said that the legal framework for considering migration issues in general and for considering issues of forced migrants is different, and there are understandable reasons why states would like to separate these concepts as a whole. Both at the level of the absolute majority of documents at the universal level and at the regional level, there is always a confusion of these two concepts. In her understanding, a migrant is a comprehensive concept that covers all possible motivations for moving, including the search for protection, that is, a refugee or other forced migrant is a special case of a migrant. There is no legal definition of migrants, and different aspects are emphasized. When speaking about migrants, we must mean everyone, because when it is necessary to speak separately about refugees, it is imperative to stipulate this. From the point of view of documents, it is imperative to look at the context, whether it is specified what kind of migrants we are talking about.

The second question concerned the protection of refugees under international law. The lecturer noted that the system here is much more established than in relation to international migrants in general. And refugee law is an established expression in English, Russian and other languages. There is an international treaty, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1967 Protocol and a base of recommendatory documents developed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. That is, with the legal basis for refugees, everything is more or less clear.

At the end of the lecture, the audience thanked the lecturer for an interesting and informative report.