E/CN.4/1503 page 2
3. The recent mass flights of people to neighbouring countries not only represent wholescale human deprivation and misery, but have come to place upon their hosts and upon the international community as a whole burdens which it is proving increasingly difficult to bear. The three solutions which until recently
enabled most refugee situations to be resolved, namely volun- tary repatriation, local settlement and resettlement in third
countries, can no longer suggest an answer in every case.
While circumstances in
in the home country remain substantially
the same and as long as there is no dialogue between the governments most directly concerned, there is no hope of paving the way to a voluntary return. Where the refugees are numbered
in hundreds of thousands
or even millions
and land and
other resources are scarce, programmes of local integration are practically unthinkable.
As for resettlement in third
countries, the Indo-Chinese diaspora brought home to over
twenty countries which had offered special quotas at the height
of the crisis in South East Asia in mid-1979 the difficulty of integrating refugees from an entirely different ethnic and cultural background. Few have found it possible to renew their generous offers of places at anything like the same level
if at all.
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4.
Meanwhile, in some underdeveloped areas the presence of
millions of uprooted people, sometimes accompanied by as many head of livestock, is playing havoc with the struggling econom-
ies of the host countries and posing a dire ecological threat
which should not go unchecked. As for economic migrants,
world-wide economic recession has
has meant that they are no
longer in demand on the same scale as before. Yet millions
still strive to
strive to reach more affluent countries in the hope of
finding work and a better life.
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