E/CN.4/1503 page 53
114. To summarize very briefly the foregoing, the overview of
the past decade amply demonstrates that the consequences of exodus situations may be measured in terms not only of
human suffering but also of threats to national or regional peace and stability.
mass
115. People leave for a variety of reasons, and usually as a combination of factors rather than a single one. The social contract has failed temporarily or permanently. Modernization
and progress have made casualties of people who held certain
customs and traditions too dear. In the chaos of war and
post-war reconstruction, populations may have been repeatedly uprooted, and thereby conditioned for a further uprooting from their country when the going is hard. Colonialism
left a heritage of artificial boundaries and structurally
imbalanced economies. The repressive tactics.
tactics of white
Most provisions of
minority régimes have made many victims.
the Declaration of Human Rights have been violated.
-
116. These "push factors" must be viewed against a series of economic realities in developing countries, such as high population growth, global food insecurity and a hunger-induced rise in death rates, inflation, unemployment, the flight of
which taken in
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skilled manpower and ecological deterioration. combination may bring large sectors of the population of the world's poorest countries to the threshold of economic distress. Deficiencies in infrastructure, the high cost of equipping modern armed forces, loss or reduction in both trade and aid
and the calamitous impact of oil price rises have in the last ten years further handicapped young nations lacking any tra- dition of statehood. One result has frequently been the