TNAG-1787-FCO40-2547-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-refugees-general-1988 — Page 193

CONFIDENTIAL

FROM:

PAUL FIFOOT

Miss Slate

Para 3: Mr Millett in

UND had a comment in Hi.

Could you check it out. Саляци

CC:

think we may need further winter tis.

Mr Footman

HKD

WH 312

My Hum

My Paul

1815

DATE: 10 MAY 1988

Mr McLaren

Mr Berman, Legal Advisers Mr P K Williams, UND

Mr Adams, SEAD

33

Mrs S Morphet, Research Dept

Wirls Siyi We may

REFUGEES IN HONG KONG

1.

HUD 243/5

need to

consider para 3 further.

N 1015

The 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees has not been extended to Hong Kong. Our obligations in respect of Hong Kong are therefore to be considered on the basis of general international law and not that particular Convention. In my view:-

(a)

there is no legal obligation to accord the right of entry to Hong Kong to persons claiming to be refugees;

(b)

in particular, Sir M Maclehose's statement at the 1979 Conference did not create any legal obligation;

(c)

there is not as yet a generally recognised legal obligation of non-refoulement applicable as respects refugees in Hong Kong.

As regards point (c), however, I think it is not improbable that if the issue of the non-refoulement of refugees were to come before an international tribunal (though it is difficult to see how that might happen in the context of Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong), the tribunal might be persuaded that such a legal obligation had at last emerged.

2.

The above conclusions are however of limited significance in respect of governments like the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. It is undoubtedly accepted generally amongst States which have been faced with, or concerned with, refugee problems in recent years that there is a /putative high humanitarian obligation not to turn/refugees away

where the consequences of so doing would be to put their lives or safety in danger, and not to return refugees to their country of origin if that too would have the consequences of putting their lives or safety in danger. The consequences of a government ignoring these humani- tarian considerations would, in domestic political terms, be unlikely to be significantly different from a breach

/of

CONFIDENTIAL

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