TNAG-1066-FCO40-1316-Human-rights-in-Hong-Kong-1981 — Page 77

E/CN.4/1503 page 2

3. The recent mass flights of people to neighbouring countries not only represent wholescale human deprivation and misery, but have come to place upon their hosts and upon the international community as a whole burdens which it is proving increasingly difficult to bear. The three solutions which until recently

enabled most refugee situations to be resolved, namely volun- tary repatriation, local settlement and resettlement in third

countries, can no longer suggest an answer in every case.

While circumstances in

in the home country remain substantially

the same and as long as there is no dialogue between the governments most directly concerned, there is no hope of paving the way to a voluntary return. Where the refugees are numbered

in hundreds of thousands

or even millions

and land and

other resources are scarce, programmes of local integration are practically unthinkable.

As for resettlement in third

countries, the Indo-Chinese diaspora brought home to over

twenty countries which had offered special quotas at the height

of the crisis in South East Asia in mid-1979 the difficulty of integrating refugees from an entirely different ethnic and cultural background. Few have found it possible to renew their generous offers of places at anything like the same level

if at all.

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4.

Meanwhile, in some underdeveloped areas the presence of

millions of uprooted people, sometimes accompanied by as many head of livestock, is playing havoc with the struggling econom-

ies of the host countries and posing a dire ecological threat

which should not go unchecked. As for economic migrants,

world-wide economic recession has

has meant that they are no

longer in demand on the same scale as before. Yet millions

still strive to

strive to reach more affluent countries in the hope of

finding work and a better life.

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