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This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the international legal foundations of the right to return, its doctrinal evolution, and the mechanisms for its implementation in post-conflict contexts. It argues that the right to return should not be understood merely as a classical individual human right, but rather as a complex, multi-level, and functional legal institution shaped by the interaction of normative frameworks, institutional mechanisms, and practical enforcement processes. Using a comparative legal approach, the study systematically examines post-conflict models of return in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Cyprus. Their normative, institutional, and procedural characteristics are analyzed, highlighting both similarities and differences in the implementation of the right to return. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of property rights as a central element of this right, as well as on the primacy of restitution as the principal mechanism for restoring violated rights. The article also addresses the limitations of compensation as a subsidiary mechanism, applicable only when restitution is not feasible. Drawing on the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, the study explores the doctrine of “continuing violation” and its implications for the temporal and legal scope of the right to return.
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Khalid Niyazov (2026) studied this question.
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