TNAG-1066-FCO40-1316-Human-rights-in-Hong-Kong-1981 — Page 8

E/CN.4/1503 Page 2

3. The recent mass flights of people to neighbouring countries

not only represent whole scale 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 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.

-

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 meant that they are no longer in demand on the

the same scale as before. Yet millions

still strive to reach more affluent countries in the hope of finding work and a better life.

له