The residual cases are unfortunately
2 nothing new since the whole crisis started some 10 years ago. The
3 concern of the country of so-called first asylum and the subsequent
discussion between this country and the country of resettlement have
always tackled this problem of backlogs and number of people who would
stay longer before being resettled. Yet I think that this problem
also should be viewed, at least initially, against the background of
what has been since I would say 1977-78 and later has been achieved.
It has to be recalled that over 1.3 million people actually left
Indo-China and that today some close to 1.2 million people have been resettled in third country. From that point of view I think it is a
remarkable success and effort undertaken by the international community
by quite a large number of countries, the one offering asylum
initially, the other one resettling such a large number of people,
so that the present case load of people not yet resettled have to be seen, as I have said, against that initial achievement.
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So
It is true that also already in the past it happened
occasionally that kind of cyclical movement where either new arrivals
increased or where it took a little bit longer to resettle people.
that I think at no stage should one take lightly people who have not
been resettled or people who have not been permitted to integrate locally or to benefit from any other kind of solution, and this
presently certainly is one effort UNHCR is doing in analysing exactly
who is left where and what his chances are to be rapidly resettled.
It is true to say also that there are a few cases which
might be more difficult to solve yet I would say everything should
be undertaken to find also proper solution for these people. I do
know that here in Hong Kong the whole problem of long stayer has been of concern to everyone including, of course, and basically to UNHCR and hence now, as in the past, hopefully not too much in the future,
we will give special attention to that problem.
When it comes to repatriation, I think it is much too early for the time being for me to really comment since here it is
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