Formation and development of human rights standards in the activities of the National Police of Ukraine: from the ideology of state-building to law enforcement practice

This article provides a comprehensive historical and legal analysis of the evolution of human rights standards in the activities of law enforcement agencies in Ukraine. The research covers the period from the proclamation of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine in 1990 to the current stage of the National Police's operation. The purpose of the article is to identify the key stages of the transformation of legal regulation and the institutional philosophy of policing through the prism of establishing a human-centered model of the state. The methodological basis of the research includes historical-legal, comparative-legal, formal-legal, and systemic-structural methods. The ideological significance of the Declaration of State Sovereignty is analyzed as a document that laid the worldview foundation for breaking with the Soviet repressive-punitive model of the militsiya, which served the interests of the party-state apparatus. It is determined that the principles of popular sovereignty, the rule of law, and the priority of universally recognized norms of international law proclaimed in the Declaration became the starting point for the humanization of the law enforcement system. The process of constitutionalizing these ideas in the 1996 Constitution of Ukraine is examined. The content of key constitutional norms (Articles 3, 8, 19, 27–29) is analyzed in detail, which enshrined human rights as the highest value and established the principle of the rule of law as the basis for the activities of all state authorities. It is substantiated that these norms became an imperative requirement for the subsequent radical reform of law enforcement agencies. The central part of the article is the analysis of the 2015 Law of Ukraine «On the National Police» as the key act that implemented constitutional standards into the operational activities of the police. The content and meaning of the main principles of police activity (rule of law, respect for human rights and freedoms, legality, openness, interaction with the public) are disclosed, and their direct genetic link with the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine is demonstrated. The influence of European standards, particularly the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, on the law enforcement practice of the National Police is also considered. The article highlights the current challenges facing the police, especially in the context of martial law, and the role of the «community policing» concept in building partnership relations between the police and society. It is concluded that the evolution of human rights standards in police activities is an integral and indicative marker of Ukraine's establishment as a sovereign, democratic, and law-based state.