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UNCLASSIFIED
P Morgan Esq
UND
FCO.
HKK 243/1
12 FENG)
INDL
→ Your reference
Our reference 618/1
51
Date
6 February 1979
en
353
1.
No
J13121
193
Thank you for your letter of 22 January in which you raised the interesting question as to why UNHCR consistently refer to the "boat people" as displaced persons rather than as refugees. UNHCR were mandated by a General Assembly resolution in 1975 to provide humanitarian assistance to the Indo-Chinese displaced persons and they have stuck to this term because of a wish not to offend the Vietnamese by calling them refugees. As you know, the Convention definition of a refugee is a person who has a well-founded fear of being persecuted, and the use of this term clearly has political implications for Vietnam. UNHCR does however refer to these people individually as refugees after they have been interviewed and their status determined. Countries would otherwise presumably not be able to accept them under refugee quotas for permanent settlement.
2. UNHCR are not in a position to make any pronouncements on the frequently made suggestion that these people are illegal immigrants even if they privately thought so. They are sometimes also loosely referred to as economic refugees, but UNHCR are likely to stick to "displaced persons" as the least emotive of all the terms.
ces: I Orr Esq, Political Adviser, HONG KONG
HK & GD-
SEAD MVD
DR Snoxell