TNAG-1276-FCO40-1626-Resettlement-of-Vietnamese-refugees-from-Hong-Kong-1983 — Page 181

Mr Peate (UND)

INDOCHINESE REFUGEES:

1

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Reference

HIL

This paper gives much emphores to voluntary repatriation, though

net in the HK context

tex

HONOLULU CONFERENCE

105

You will now have seen FCO telno 1280 to Washington as well as Hong Kong telno 1113 which suggest we are now on all fours over the Honolulu Conference and should wait for the Canadians to let us know

what transpires.

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1106

2 Mr Adams in Geneva sent me by facsimile on Friday the attached advance copy of a paper which UNHCR representatives will be circulating at the Conference. He said on the telephone that_UNHCR also intend · presumably after the Conference, and possibly in the Tight of whatever is agreed there to circulate the paper more widely with a covering note asking for government action. UNHCR officials apparently now feel that it is time for Governments to decide what they can do to solve the problems.

be.

3 The paper is interesting, at first glance, in the way it takes up the idea increasingly advocated by refugee agencies of regional solutions. It is hard to say how enthusiastic regional states will The countries of first asylum, excluded from the Honolulu Conference, have since 1979 insisted on permanent solutions in the West in exchange for their own offer of first asylum. But para 15 suggests that some Lao hill tribes should be resettled in the region though outside Thailand.

4 Similarly, behind the international bureaucratese of para 9, lies what seems to me to be the idea that if durable solutions cannot soon be found for boat-people in the West, interim solutions in the region should be developed. ''Regional self-sufficiency schemes'' sound very much like the system of open camps in Hong Kong, perhaps adapted for other first asylum countries. But I doubt if they will be popular with Governments. No doubt Hong Kong would prefer to persevere with the closed camp policy. Could the encouraging figures in para 7 suggest that generally poor resettlement prospects and closed camps are having an effect on refugee outflows?

HKK 243/2

RECEIVED IN REGISTRY

16 AUG 1983

DESK OFFICER

INDEX

PA

aw

1 August 1983

REGISTRY

Action Taken

ти

се Miss Walker (HKD)

Azlya.

CM J Segar

1

South East Asian Department W 86A 233 5073

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CODE 18-77

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