Asylum seeker: a person who seeks protection from persecution or serious harm in a country other than their own and awaits a decision on the application for refugee status under relevant international and national instruments.
Beneficiary of temporary protection (BTP): a citizen of Ukraine who obtained the corresponding status as per the European Temporary Protection Directive. The term has a legal basis in the EU member states.
Externally displaced person (EDP): a citizen of Ukraine displaced outside Ukraine as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Unlike IDPs, this term does not have a legal basis in Ukraine, and is used solely for analytical purposes in this report, as a juxtaposition to the term “internally displaced”. The term covers persons in need of international protection as per international law defining such persons, including but not limited to beneficiaries of temporary protection as per the European Temporary Protection Directive, beneficiaries of other similar statuses in non-EU countries, asylum seekers and refugees since February 2022. It also includes persons who left Ukraine to de facto seek international protection abroad, but who were admitted by another country on the ground of other documents authorising travel and stay, for example on grounds such as tourism, study, labour, or family reunification.
First-generation migrants from Ukraine: individuals born in Ukraine, including in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine before the declaration of independence in 1991, and residing outside of Ukraine, regardless of their legal status or citizenship held. The term does not have a legal basis in Ukraine. It is used for statistical purposes in this report, as per statistical definitions used in the OECD Database on Immigrants in OECD Countries (DIOC).
Foreign Ukrainian: a person who is a citizen of a state other than Ukraine, or a stateless person, of Ukrainian ethnic origin or descent from Ukraine. The term has a legal basis in Ukraine as per the Law of Ukraine on Foreign Ukrainians.
Internally displaced person (IDP): an internally displaced person is a citizen of Ukraine, a foreigner, or a stateless person who is legally present in the territory of Ukraine and has the right to lawfully reside in Ukraine, and who was forced to leave or abandon their place of residence as a result of or to avoid the negative consequences of armed conflict, temporary occupation, widespread violence, human rights violations, or natural or man-made emergencies. The term has a legal basis in Ukraine, as per the Law of Ukraine on Ensuring the Rights and Freedoms of Internally Displaced Persons. Internally displaced persons may be registered and hence have a corresponding legal status, making them eligible for certain state support programmes and visible in administrative statistics; or unregistered, which means that they still have a number of rights and may be visible in survey data, but are not eligible for certain state support programmes and may not be visible in administrative statistics.
Refugee: a person who has fled their country to escape conflict, violence, or well-founded fear of persecution to seek international protection abroad. Unless otherwise specified, this broad understanding is used in this report. In international law, and depending on country-specific application, the term can have more nuanced definitions. For example, the term “refugee” established by the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol is narrower, as it applies to individuals with a well-founded fear of persecution for specific reasons who are unable or unwilling to seek protection from their country of origin. In the EU context, a refugee is either a third-country national who, owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group, is outside the country of nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country, or a stateless person, who, being outside of the country of former habitual residence for the same reasons as mentioned before, is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to return to it, and to whom exclusion grounds do not apply. The recognition by an EU Member State of a third-country national or stateless person as a refugee manifests in granting a refugee status.
Returnee from abroad: a person of Ukrainian origin who has resided outside of Ukraine for reasons other than tourism, and who has returned to Ukraine or their habitual place of residence with the intention of staying long-term. It includes “persons who have returned from abroad after seeking international protection”, as defined by the statistical concept of the International Recommendations on Refugee Statistics (IRRS) in 2018, as well as other returning migrants from abroad. In this report, the term corresponds to the term “returned from a host state”, used in several laws in Ukraine, for example, in the Law on External Labour Migration.
Returnee from internal displacement: an IDP who has returned to their habitual place of residence, which in this report corresponds to the terms “return to previous place of residence” and “return to the place of residence left behind”, as per the Law of Ukraine on Ensuring the Rights and Freedoms of Internally Displaced Persons. In the International Recommendations on IDP Statistics (IRIS) 2020, the corresponding term is “return to their former homes or habitual place of residence”.
Ukrainian abroad: a citizen of Ukraine, who is abroad for reasons other than tourism, including labour migrants and their family members, students, Ukrainian spouses of non-Ukrainian citizens, Ukrainians on other legal statuses, Ukrainians in irregular situations, and also externally displaced persons as a result of Russia’s full-scale aggression. This term is used in draft State Strategy “Ukrainian Global Community: New Policies for the Period 2025-2027”.
Ukrainian diaspora: a term used to refer to people of Ukrainian descent abroad. The term, while not explicitly defined, is used in several legal acts in Ukraine, for example in the Decree of the President of Ukraine on the Decision of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine “On the Strategy for Information Security.” In Ukraine, the term is predominantly used in historical and cultural contexts to refer to earlier waves of emigrants from the 20th century and before.
Ukrainian global community (global Ukrainians): a term used to refer to people of Ukrainian origin, including citizens, who reside outside the state borders of Ukraine. The term had a legal precedent in Ukraine as per the National Concept for Co‑operation with Foreign Ukrainians up to 2010, adopted by Presidential decree in 2006. It is also used in the draft State Strategy “Ukrainian Global Community: New Policies for the Period 2025-2027”. This includes “foreign Ukrainians” and “Ukrainians abroad”, who identify themselves with Ukraine, and express a willingness to belong to the Ukrainian nation.