Status of the victim in international law act

The term “victim” is widely used in international documents, denoting various legal categories. At the same time, there is no single collective notion of the term “victim” in the doctrine of international law. Positive international law follows the path of detailed sectoral regulation of the legal status of the relevant category of persons, with each branch of international law introducing its own specifc features into the concept of the term “victim”. The term “victim” in the frst sense is often identifed in the Russian criminal procedure legal science with the term “victim”, which seems to be rather controversial. Victim is defned as persons who have been individually or collectively harmed as a result of an act or omission that violates the applicable national criminal laws of member states, including laws prohibiting criminal abuse of power (P. 1 of the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power). In paragraph 18 of the said Declaration, the term “victims” refers to persons who have been harmed by a violation of internationally accepted norms relating to human rights, which in this case does not constitute a violation of national criminal laws. In addition to these two values, there are two more: a victim of an armed confict and a victim in the understanding of the European Court of Human Rights.