CODE 18-77
AWO Ltd.
7/84
NOTE FOR THE FILE
Item 5.
Reference...
37TH EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF UNHCR: INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION: 8 OCTOBER 1986
1. Ambassador Chiba presented the report of the Sub- Committee on International Protection. He said that the Sub-Committee had recommended that more states ratify the relevant refugee instruments and that all states fully implemented their provisions. To this end the Sub- Committee had drafted a declaration which they hoped the full Executive Committee would endorse. It was their hope that within five years more states would become party to the instruments.
2. It had not proved possible for the Sub-Committee to complete its work on detention. The Sub-Committee therefore set up a Working Group to draw up conclusions based on the discussions of the Sub-Committee. The Working Group would report later.
3. Ambassador Chiba regretted that no consensus on military attacks on refugee camps was possible despite years of effort. The Sub-Committee had come to the conclusion that efforts to this end must continue and had requested that a detailed report be submitted to the next Executive Committee. The Sub-Committee called on concerned governments to work for humanitarian resolutions of international protection issues.
4.
The Director of the Refugee Law and Doctrine Section in UNHCR then introduced the paper which the Sub-Committee had discussed. The paper tried to highlight the problems facing UNHCR. One of these was the problem of large movements of people looking for more peaceful pastures who were not mandate refugees. Such persons should not be sent back to their country of origin while conditions in that country were such as to imperil their lives. They should receive humanitarian treatment in the meantime. However, these larger movements of asylum seekers and refugees from least developed countries to the industrial countries had resulted in a change of the receiving government's attitude towards refugees and asylum seekers as a whole. They viewed most people from least developed countries as economic migrants but it was essential that they did not treat all asylum seekers as economic migrants. Many of these people come from areas of strife and it was essential that receiving countries should determine each case carefully and the causes behind that person's movement.
For many such people there was no possibility of a durable solution either in the region or in the country of origin. This was particularly so for young urban asylum seekers who tended to gravitate towards industrial countries where the most restrictive measures had been put in place. He called
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