E/CN.4/1503 Annex I page 3
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SOUTH ASIAN SUB-CONTINENT: EAST BENGAL
8.
The fragile cohesion of the two halves of Pakistan was shattered on 25 March 1971 when, following three weeks of inconclusive talks between President Yahya Khan and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, leader of the Awami League, on the subject of a new constitution, contingents of the army based in Dacca arrested Sheikh Mujib and started armed action against vast sectors of the population in the name of restoring law and order or forestalling an armed uprising. In other parts of the country, control of many of the main population centres, initially seized by East Bengali army defectors, police and Awami League vigilantes, was gradually wrested back by the West Pakistan army amid much bloodshed. The scale of destruction and suffering subsequently wrought upon the population throughout nine months of that year was deeply disruptive.
9.
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The consequences were first a mass exodus into India, which presented the Government in New Delhi with a human crisis of unprecedented proportions, then, in December after neither political nor diplomatic moves emanating from the United Nations Headquarters, nor any other diplomatic moves, had had any effect on the conclusion to which events were leading a declaration of war by India which considered the threat to her economy and general stability posed by the humanitarian flood from Pakistan to be a causus belli.
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10. The Government of India reported the arrival of 600 000 people from East Bengal within the first month and by October, it estimated that there were
there were nearly ten million refugees, of whom 6.8 million were in camps and the remainder with friends and relatives. The Government of Pakistan declared that over two million had actually left.
11.
On 22 April, the Government of India, faced with the responsibility for handling the emergency and considering that voluntary return within a period of six months would be the only lasting solution of the problem, addressed an appeal for help to the Secretary-General of the United Nations who immedi- ately designated UNHCR as "focal point" for relief assistance through and from the United Nations system. The task involved not only co-ordinating the efforts of the various UN agencies directly concerned, mainly UNICEF,
UNICEF, WHO and WFP with whose work relief action of the League of Red Cross Societies in support of that of the Indian Red Cross was closely linked
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