TNAG-1066-FCO40-1316-Human-rights-in-Hong-Kong-1981 — Page 155

E/CN.4/1503

Annex I page 12

37.

The masses of people arriving in Portugal from the former colonies in

in the 1975-76 period posed serious problems of employment and accommodation to the new government in Lisbon. With regard to refugees fleeing overland, while many of those arriving in Zaire found themselves with people of their own ethnic group and were able, despite hardship,

survive without international assistance, for vast numbers of Angolan refugees, as well as for the internally displaced, substantial programmes of international assistance were nevertheless needed. In mid-1975, the transitional government in Luanda requested ICRC assistance in view of the deteriorating medical situation (most of the Portuguese doctors having left the country), the fact that civilians were in a permanent state of flight to escape combat areas, severe shortages in the supply of basic foodstuffs owing to the paralysis in road transport and the return of Angolans from Zaire. Although the unfore- seeable and haphazard population flows the momentarily calmer areas made any precise assessment of needs impossible, ICRC was able to mount a relief action on behalf of the people worst affected, making use of

of consignments donated largely by the EEC and the Swiss Confederation.

38.

At the

Subsequently UNHCR, at the

the request of the Secretary- General of the United Nations, implemented in the face of sizeable logistical difficulties a United Nations Programme of Humanitarian Assistance to Angola, for which an inter-agency mission had reported needs calling for $ 32.5 million in cash and 48 000 tons of food, on behalf of an estimated one million internally-displaced persons as well as returnees. same time, UNHCR was undertaking relief and rural integration programmes to assist many thousands of Angolan refugees in Zaire and Zambia. In Zaire, rural integration assistance (complicated at one stage by the massing to the fledgling centres of thousands of semi-settled Angolans from the border areas, stricken by drought and the blight of their crops) was implemented by the "Association internationale de développement rural" (AIDR); in Zambia it was undertaken by the Lutheran World Federation/Zambian Christian Refugee Service under a tripartite agreement signed with the Government The new massive influx into Zaire in late 1977 and early 1978 gave rise to new relief measures involving Swiss volunteers and to a

further revision of the rural settlement programme. all these actions, WFP and EEC foodstuffs played a predominant role.

39.

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The numbers of Angolan refugees reported by UNHCR at the autumn 1981 session of the High Commissioner's Executive Committee were 215 000 in Zaire (where the ongoing programme of rural settlement is benefiting 25 000 of them) and 28 000 in Zambia, approximately 12 000 of whom are in two rural settle- ments ready to be handed over to the Government of Zambia.

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