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went to land refugees in Thailand. This compares with the overall total of 341,998 Indo-Chinese refugees at 30 September, of whom 161,814 (47%) are land refugees in Thailand. For a variety of reasons, boat refugees have certainly fared better under current resettlement programmes. We do, nevertheless, think it fair that, however countries divide their programmes between land and boat cases, they should consider allocating places for boạt refugees in numbers which bear some relation to the burden in places of first asylum. In this respect the table at Annex A showing the proportion of resettlement places going to refugees in Hong Kong is instructive, especially when compared with the regional figures in the table in para 5 above. Apart from the special case of the UK, only Canada and the FRG have run major programmes hero commensurate with the burden torne by Hong Kong. In general we hope that copy addressees will comment appropriately on any new allocations which fall significantly short of the 36% figure for Hong Kong's share of the boat refugee population at the end of September. If the comparatively lower resettlement rate continues, the proportion of the regional burden will rise - once the full October and November figures are in it will probably be close to 40%
(in October 8,027 refugees were resettled from Malaysia and 3,292 from Indonesia).
7.
We hope that Oitawa and Born will express gratitude For the fair wav in which the Canadian and West German allocations have been made up to now. Since these are major programmes it is of great importance to us that this should continue. Obviously it would most help our prospects if the numbers going to the US could be increased (and never again fall below the current quota of 2,000 a month as they did in October) and if Australia and France could be persuaded to deal fairly with Hong Kong's burden. Although smaller Programmes do not individually make much impact, the cumulative effect can be considerable. Apart from the 6 major programmes
(i.e. from Italy downwards on the table at Annex A), 6,388 resettlement places for boat refugees were made available from January to September and only 468 of these (7.3%) came to Fong Kong. If the offtake had been in proportion to the numbers here we would have had about 1,400 more places in the same period. We hope UKMIS Genova can make this point at every opportunity to UNHCR since their advice is often decisive with smaller programmes.
8.
We are concerned that the low numbers resettled from Hong Kong could be perpetuated by countries which have largely exhausted their existing quotas restricting their future intake to family reunion cases. There will be fewer such cases here because fewer have gone from Hong Kong and a high proportion of the refugees here come from northern and central Vietnam and are not likely to have many relatives amongst those already resettled from other places of first asylum where the inflow has been predominantly from Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong delta
It is, of course, sensible that family reunion should be
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