Legal Mechanism Of The Ensuring Constitutional Right For Housing In Ukraine And Its Improvement In The Context Of The Russian-Ukrainian War

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the issues of improving the legal mechanism for ensuring the constitutional right to housing in Ukraine in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war. There are several national legislative and regulative acts regulating the field of ensuring the right to housing in wartime. It is clarified that the legal mechanism for ensuring the constitutional right to housing in Ukraine in times of war is characterized by several disadvantages: contradictions between the legal framework formed during 2014–2022 and the legal framework formed after the full-scale invasion; objective impossibility of practical implementation of certain provisions of legislation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine; partially incorrect conceptual and categorical apparatus, etc. There are formulated two main directions for improving the legal mechanism for ensuring the constitutional right to housing in Ukraine in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The first of these is to amend the Constitution of Ukraine to enshrine the obligation of the state to create conditions for the restoration of housing destroyed and damaged as a result of hostilities during the Russian-Ukrainian war and to compensate for the costs or reimburse its value. The second direction is to amend Ukrainian legislation in the relevant area. The second direction is to amend Ukrainian legislation in the relevant area. These amendments should address the right to housing for migrants and their families under Ukraine’s future migration obligations; expanding the range of recipients of compensation for damaged/destroyed real estate from «citizens of Ukraine» to residents of Ukraine» (excluding citizens of the Russian Federation and other countries who acquired ownership of housing in the occupied territories since 2014); declaring certain settlements as destroyed to prevent the risk of abuse in the establishment and operation of commissions for consideration of compensation for destroyed real estate as a result of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine; creating various types of free economic zones and specific entities («free urban reconstruction zones») with appropriate benefits for reconstruction in war-damaged locations.