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INTRODUCTION

In accordance with generally accepted rules of international law, whenever a citizen of any country is abroad he can count on the diplomatic protection of his country of origin if his rights and freedoms are infringed.

This universal principle, enshrined in the constitutions of the majority of countries worldwide, has become a cornerstone for building the interrelations between the state and its citizens.

In Ukraine, this principle is secured in the Constitution of 1996, Article 25: “Ukraine guarantees care and protection to its citizens who are beyond its borders.” Thereby the state actually undertakes to ensure the protection of the rights and freedoms of its citizens during their stay abroad.

For Ukraine the problem of protecting its citizens abroad became especially acute right after the country gained its independence. After the visa regulations and frontier regime were liberalized, the migration flows across Ukraine’s territory increased sharply: while a large number of Ukrainian citizens traveled abroad for different reasons, the inflow of aliens into the country’s territory went up markedly.

To a large extent these were spontaneous processes, because no legal framework was in place and the government lacked the experience in controlling migration flows. Neither were there any effective mechanisms to protect the rights of a large number of Ukrainian citizens who were abroad during crises situations.

From the mid-1990s an ever growing number of Ukrainian citizens was leaving the country for economic reasons, primarily to seek employment elsewhere.

For Ukraine migration for employment abroad gained dangerous proportions during the past five years following the aggravation of the socioeconomic situation in the period from 1994 to 1999.

Millions of Ukrainian migrant workers, most of whom have been finding jobs in Russia, Western Europe and North America, have compelled the government to assess in a new way its role in the protection of the rights and freedoms of our citizens.

The situation has become the more complex, since the majority of Ukrainians abroad are illegal migrants, one of the most discriminated and unprotected category of aliens whose rights are grossly infringed.

As a result, more and more of our countrymen abroad are appealing for help to Ukrainian bodies of state authority, in particular the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Quite a few of such appeals have been addressed to the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights. Every appeal is an expression of human pain and frustrated hopes of finding a personal solution or else saving the appellant’s dignity and frequently his life.

Therefore, the Commissioner for Human Rights initiated a special monitoring to study the complex problems related to the status of observance and protection of human rights and freedoms of Ukrainian citizens abroad, above all of migrant workers.

The purpose of this study is to make an in-depth analysis of the mentioned issues and offer recommendations and proposals to improve the available mechanism of protecting the rights of Ukrainian citizens abroad, and also formulate a long-term government policy in the domain of migration relations with allowance for the prospects of global development and the interests of Ukraine and its citizens.

The Special Report of the Commissioner for Human Rights is based on the analysis and generalization of the materials in the possession of the Commissioner as well as on the information received from the central bodies of state authority, specifically the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), State Committee for Guarding the State Border (SCGSB), National Academy of Sciences (NAS), state administrations in the oblasts, Ukrinjurokelgia (Ukrainian Foreign Legal Collegium), and from a number of Ukrainian banks. By request of the Commissioner relevant information was also kindly provided by the diplomatic missions of foreign states accredited in Ukraine. The committees of the Ukrainian Parliament, such as the Committee for Foreign Affairs, Committee for Human Rights, Ethnic Minorities and Inter-Ethnic Relations, Committee for Health Care, Motherhood and Childhood, and the Committee for Social Policy and Labor, also addressed the issues under review.

In compliance with paragraph 3, Article 18 of the Law of Ukraine On the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, the Commissioner for Human Rights hereby presents the Special Report On the Status of Observance and Protection of the Rights of Ukrainian Citizens Abroad.

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