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DEFINITION OF A REFUGEE
is
to
According to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, a refugee is
some one who is
outside the country of his nationality "owing
well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons
of race, religion,
nationality, membership of a particular social group or political
opinion" and
unable or,
because of such fear, unwilling to seek
his own country's protection. Although the Convention has not been
extended to Hong Kong, all refugees arriving there from Vietnam have
been granted refugee status under the Immigration Ordinance, which
was specially amended for this purpose. They have been accepted on
the understanding reached at the 1979 Geneva conference that third
countries should accept as many as possible of the refugees reaching
a "country of first asylum" in this case Hong Kong. It was also
generally agreed at the Geneva conference that boat people from
Indo-China should be considered
a group to be refugees, irrespective of
leaving.
the years have
continued, this
as
As
individual motives for
elapsed, and as boat departures from Vietnam have
consensus has however come under increasing strain.
UNHCR SOLUTIONS
The UNHCR has identified three durable solutions
problem:
to the refugee
Voluntary repatriation (where possible). So far only about
3,000 Cambodians have agreed to return (from Laos) and 2,300
Laotians (from Thailand).
Local regional integration of refugees in their country of
first asylum.
This has been possible only to a very limited
extent in the case of Indo-Chinese refugees, mainly because of
the difficulty of
of absorbing refugees
refugees with different ethnic,
cultural and linguistic backgrounds to the population of the
places of first asylum; and also in Hong Kong's case because
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