TNAG-1066-FCO40-1316-Human-rights-in-Hong-Kong-1981 — Page 230

AFRICA SOUTH OF THE SAHARA

E/CN.4/1503

Annex III page 1

1.

A continent which knew large influxes from the Arab world in the middle ages and from Europe in the nineteenth century had been weakened over a considerable period by the massive forced migration which was

was the ignominious slave trade. The next mass exodus was mainly of Europeans around the time their erstwhile colonies attained independence. In the period 1974-77, almost one million "retornados" are reported to have left for Portugal from four

four territories long under Portuguese dominion.

2.

International flows of African populations south of the Sahara have largely been confined to the continent. According to estimates made for 1975 by the International Labour Office, over three million African nationals of

of west and central Africa resided outside their own countries. West Africa is in fact one of the few regions of the world where relatively large-scale free movement of people across international boundaries takes place. Where movement was once compulsory because of

of wars,

the slave trade and, in the early colonial period, forced labour, in recent years it has become a free migration of people as part of their effort to better their living standards.

3.

From

According to a study made recently which focused on migration in West Africa with particular reference to nine countries, the volume of the flow is still considerable. 1965 to 1975, six countries (Gambia, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo) were reported to have a net gain of 1.3 million from migration, an important factor when their combined population at the end of the decade was only some 22 million. At the same time, the countries from which most of these people came (Ghana, Mali and, most notably, Upper Volta) experienced a

loss of 1.2 million people against a combined population of much the same order. Upper Volta, which has a 1979 population of only 5.6 million, was the biggest sender with as many as a million of its citizens working in other countries almost three quarters of them in the Ivory Coast, where migrants represent about a quarter of the work force as predominantly agricultural wage-labourers and unskilled urban workers.

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